Eight week update (and an ode to Diclectin)

This has been an eventful week, but I have to start off by paying tribute to the miracle that is Diclectin.  I tried so hard to avoid taking it, but the nausea and vomiting were making it impossible for me to function.  After one especially terrible day at school, I caved.  Even the midwife told me to take it. I feel so much better…still a bit queasy and averse to a lot of smells and foods, but my food is staying down.  Alleluia.

We had a bit of a scare this week.  I started having a small amount of weird spotting.  Lauren was away on a business trip, and here’s where I made the biggest mistake that I’ve made in this entire process:  I got online.  I know better! (A tip: if you ever find yourself needing to have brain surgery, stay off any kind of forum.  People who had good outcomes are out doing stuff, and people who had bad outcomes are home posting on the forums.)  Of course, for every person online who reassures that “brown blood is old blood”, there’s another who says “that’s what I thought, and then insert terrible thing happened.”  I worked myself up into such a state that the nurse at the fertility clinic stopped trying to tell me how common this is.  “Come on in,” she said.

The little kidney bean is fine.  Strong heartbeat, growing on target.  The tech kept telling me how cute he/she is, but honestly, I kept thinking, “It kind of looks like a shrimp this week.” Although the fetus is boasting a brain now!  That seems incredible, only a few weeks after being a clump of cells. I do seem to have developed a very small blood clot next to the placenta, which may explain the mystery spotting.  No one seemed worried about this, so I’m going to try to stay calm too.  And refrain from Googling.

We’ll get another scan next week, just for peace of mind.  I told my principal yesterday, a bit earlier than I’d intended, but I need to limit my lifting because of the clot, and this may be an issue at work.  I’m the sixth person in a row to announce that I’m going be going on maternity leave.  He just looked at me and sighed.  “Well, at least I expected you,” he said.  A side benefit of needing time off for cycle monitoring, I guess!  I’m hoping that I can make it through to the end of the school year without showing enough to have to tell the kids.  Staff changes are hard for them, and I don’t want them to fret all summer.  September to December will be enough time to prepare them.

Notes from the week:

• My aversion to chocolate seems to have lifted.  Now I want all the sweet things.  All of them.
• I still only really like to eat cold foods.
• I’ve been gluten free for over a year, and I’m very, very intolerant to gluten.  I don’t generally even want anything gluteny, knowing how sick it will make me, but this week I’ve started craving all kinds of things that I can’t have.  Croissants and crusty bread with butter and veggie dogs on buns.  Things I don’t need, certainly, but it’s amazing how much I want them.
• I just noticed that all my points are food related!  I spend most of my time thinking about what I’m going to eat next, what might appeal to me, and how disgusted I am by ______.

Time is starting to move a little faster!  The weather finally turned in Toronto, and I think that helps.  This part of the school year always slides by.  It will be summer and second trimester before I know it.