The shop is closed for vacation

Lucie has arrived, so we are on vacation for the time being.

The Trouble with Lucie

I’ve read so many things lately that have made me want to write this. I’ve got a huge list of posts planned and partially written that I want and need to get done and posted, but I keep bumping in with something else. This time it’s about Lucie and it’s taking forever to write. And as has been Miss Lucie, it’s not as easy as I thought it would be.

The first 3, all boys, were fairly easy, no real surprises. Every screening test and ultrasound had excellent results. Couldn’t be better. The only little problems that popped up were relatively little and only with me. They all three had issue on the way out shall we say that made things a bit scary for a short time- Finn had the cord around his neck, Grae flipped himself into breech position and climbed up as high as he could after I had gone into labor, all nearly 9 lbs of him, which made for a tricky day at the hospital before he was flipped back and decided to come out after all and Maddox pretty much popped out on his own in record time while the doctor screamed at me to cooperate and that he didn’t know what was happening- but every moment up to that point never even hinted that we had anything to worry about and all 3 came out as perfect and happy as we expected.

Baby 4 has been different in every way possible so far. I can only imagine what she’ll be like once we get to see her. You would think by the time you’ve been pregnant four times, it just wouldn’t be any big deal. But you’d be wrong, very wrong. It probably doesn’t help that I’ve managed to get pregnant 6 months after having my last baby twice now. And it probably doesn’t help that I have a 4 year old, 2 year old and a 1 year old. And that they are boys and quite insanely dangerous- houses with such boys should have no furniture, only padded walls and floors. And it probably doesn’t help that I’m old and get no sleep, but really none of that matters. Lucie is what she is and she will be what she will be and she’s just bound and determined to be different.

First of all she’s a girl. First girl after 3 boys. I knew she would be, even before I got pregnant, even before I knew for sure that I was pregnant. I knew she would be a girl. even when her daddy wouldn’t even look at girl names and his doctor told him he hoped we weren’t trying for a girl because we had zero chance genetically. Even though I knew it was so very, very unlikely and nobody thought we had a shot at a girl, I knew she would be a girl. I even had a name for her a full week before she was confirmed to be in there, though that name has been dismissed due to various associations, connotations and international baggage that came with it, as have a very long list of other seemingly excellent names, and because, even though I’m not sure this is really as it should be, my opinion is not the only one that matters. Her father and her brothers all also have equal say and we discussed and negotiated until we found the right combination for her. Now she’s Lucie. Lucie L train to her oldest brother, possibly LuLu or Lola to her younger brothers because she has to have a non-train based nickname, but everyone has agreed on Lucie.

I fully expected everything to go about the same as it did with the other 3, they were all pretty much the same throughout, but it didn’t. Not one thing. For the others I was sick, but there were things I could eat and I did eat and gained tons of weight (40 or so lbs and I’m 5’6” tall and fairly small overall, so that’s quite a bit to say the least). But from about 5 days in with Lucie, I was sick like I’ve never been sick before. I even lost weight in the beginning. She’s up much higher than the 3 boys, so much so that none of my clothes fit. And I can see body parts poking out and moving around, which I never saw before, I hurt in places I didn’t know were possible, I had to do the 3 hour glucose test at 35 weeks my ankles are swollen for the first time and my blood pressure is up and so many other things, but what comes next is the biggest difference. What I expected was that all tests would just come and go as easily as they had with all of the others., but did not have perfect results on our screening tests. We received results that surprised and scared me and my then Dr was less than no help. My opinion is that she sucked about as badly as anyone could which just made it all worse. However the first tests were over ridden by a final result that said everything was ok after all and I went into my 20 week ultrasound expecting the same as the 3 previous ones, lovely, perfect, maybe a bit big, but couldn’t be better.

I went in just expecting, at the worst, to find out that I was wrong about her being a girl, but I wasn’t. That was my first moment of panic, first of 3. I knew she was a girl, but as soon as it was confirmed I panicked. What was I going to do with a girl. The very second she was real I also began to doubt that name I had chosen, just like I doubted that I would ever know what to do with a girl. It was all easy when I thought I might just be imagining that she was in there since it was very unlikely that she was. Once she was real, all I could think of was the first and only time I had changed my niece’s diaper and how scary it was. I just did not know what to do with that. I know what to do with boys- diapers, toys, clothes, but a girl was suddenly very scary, but before I could get any more panicky about that, panic 2 popped in. I had placenta previa, which I knew was not good, but not much more. The technician gave me the basics of what I shouldn’t do and said she’d get the Doctor to come in, confirm and explain a bit more until I could talk to my Doctor.

Well, she came in and with her came panic #3. While she was rechecking and confirming the placenta previa, she was also asking lost of questions that had more to do with the baby than with the placenta previa. The baby, she had just noticed, had an umbilical varix which, to the best of her knowledge as a Maternal Fetal Medicine specialist, only appeared with severe chromosomal abnormalities, and before we decided on doing an amnio was there any chance that I would not have that baby if the amnio revealed such a problem, because, if so, we could do it right away. However, because all of the screening tests, in the end showed little risk and because she looked so good and was actually a bit large, she really didn’t know what to think and wasn’t sure what to do. It’s hard to know what to think when the specialist tells you she really doesn’t know what’s going on. We scheduled the fist of many follow up ultrasounds and decided to go for a fetal echo to see what was going on there since it was the most likely place for a problem to show up. It took 3 days to get my Doctor to call me back and all she said about the umbilical varix was thanks for letting her know and hung up. Not any help. Everything I looked up was awful or worse than awful. Not any help. I only saw one thing that suggested it might be ok in the end. By the time I went for the echo I knew that it could be very bad, that she could in fact, even if she did make it to delivery, not survive past that for very long. I knew that we might have to have an amnio after all to know what was going on if the Cardiologist saw anything at all that wasn’t normal. I knew that I didn’t really know anything, but that I was terrified for her. So I decided she had to have a name right away and a perfect name with no bad associations or anything negative attached to it, so that she would have a name just in case and so that she would know that we did not want anything at all to happen to her besides being born happy and healthy, like her brothers.

The echo went well enough that I began to feel better. And I focused on getting her a name and began buying her girl clothes all the way up to 24m and all of the things she would need, so that she would know that she was going to stay here with us. Instead of being afraid that she wouldn’t be able to wear or use what I was buying, I decided that we would proceed as if there were no doubt that she would be here and would need all of it. And each of the follow up echos and follow up ultrasounds went well. And after each one I felt better about our chances of her actually being ok. And she got bigger and bigger and despite being reminded at every one that there would really be no way to know for sure until she was out and we were encouraged by everyone involved to switch to a different hospital with a proper NICU, just in case, and we still have to take her to the cardiologist a few weeks after she’s born and her heart is finally set to make sure there is nothing still to come, she looked really great, other than being breech for a very long time and then transverse, and it was decided that the varix was likely to be a fluke. It can’t be explained, but so far it seems to do nothing other than be there.

My last ultrasound at 34 weeks was the last of everything. She’s huger than huge, fat faced, head down and has been cleared for normal delivery, no early delivery, no c-sections, nothing but a check by the neonatologists when she comes out, just to be sure and her visit to the Cardiologist a few weeks later. Now we’re just hoping that she’ll stay in to get past Thanksgiving because I would prefer a non- holiday visit to the hospital and get to 38 or so weeks instead of popping out early. She’s huge, she’s dropped way down and seems to be getting ready plus I’ve been having contractions for a few weeks already. Carrying around a combined total of about 100 lbs of brothers plus standing up with them for about 9-10 hours a day is not really helping with that nor is not getting much sleep, but we’ll see. All three boys arrived at 38.5 weeks, but since she is nothing like them in any way so far, I expect she’ll just do as she pleases.

Posted via email from life.nest.baby.toy's posterous

Lucie

I finally scanned in an ultrasound image of Lucie at 34 wks. We have none of the very nice 3d or 4d shots we have of everyone else, so this is the best shot of her face that we have. All you can really tell, if you are good at deciphering shadows or have an excellent imagination, is that she does look rather plump. For the other 3 we could actually see their faces, but that's what you get for having ultrasounds in NJ instead of NYC. I started writing a post about everything that's been going on with her so far (umbilical varix etc, etc), but I, being a big looser, just can't sit long enough to get it done, typing on my knees is not so much fun and the laptop is a big target for all 3 boys at the moment, so it's in protective custody, so it will have to wait until she's here.