I have a feeling that Ill be blogging about this for a while to come..
Some of people who know me may be aware, others not. After a harrowing ectopic pregnancy in August last year, Ellen and I had been trying for a child. Following the initial panic last summer, Id come round to the idea of giving my parents the good news. Sadly, it all culminated in a late night visit to A&E for Ellen which I to my shame missed. Even now I have trouble forgiving myself that....
Anyway, fast forward to last winter and this time we're actually trying to conceive. She buys some of those pregnancy monitoring sticks to pee on and wows me with all the science involved. I provide the very willing support.. if you know what I'm saying..
There's some false starts as the New Year begins. E presents me with different numbered pee sticks and explains in detail what is happening with them: 'the indicator line is too vague on that one' 'it took to long to appear on this one'.. I nod my head in what hopefully looks like sagely understanding...
However during our Spring half term trip to the Isle of Wight there is some hope. She disappears to the toilet at 4am for a worryingly long period of time before returning to bed. Success! The indicator line appears where it should, and in the right time period. Ellen does a little shimmy of joy lying next to me and we both fall asleep again.
And so it goes. E thrills about her changing appearance, teaches me (and recently Xander) a little about the miracle of pregnancy. Being a bloke, its the mystery of mysteries to me. I watch as she digs out the maternity clothes and the baby bump band (holds it safely in place, you see) and we discuss baby names and due dates. We had the first couple of scans in the last two weeks which showed little. That concerned E, but senior sister Lee put her mind at rest "We never see anything after 4 or 5 weeks anyway". The bottom line is that nothing is showing in Ellen's fallopian tubes so we are both relieved. Still, with the absence of anything on screen, a viable pregnancy cannot be ruled in.
We have the blood tests to focus on though, once again Ellen explains the science to me... I pick up a smattering. The hormone levels are supposed to increase 66-100% every 48 hours, and initially they hit the lower end of the scale. They tail off to 40% and we lose heart, they rise back to 70% and it seems we're back in business! According to Ellen's research (she'll make an expert one day) its not that unusual to see a low hormone count, providing it eventually picks up again all hope isn't lost.
Last Wednesday E visited Kingston hospital for another scan. It was unclear but an indisctinct something could be seen in the womb. She was thrilled and I couldnt help but have her enthusiasm rub off onto me. The following Monday would be the clincher, a scan and blood test was planned and hopefully we'd see little junior with some clarity. I held E's hand and screwed up my eyes looking at the computer screen whilst the consultant manipulated the pregnancy scanner, we saw.. near enough exactly what we'd seen before. The indisctinct something was still an indistinct something, it seemed development had ground to a sudden halt. The blood test results were equally disappointing, according to Ellen's maths she expected them to rise 4000% or so, they rose just 70%. We left the hospital feeling broken, for Ellen this hadnt been entirely unexpected, her symptoms had seemly been on the wane she later told me. But I was feeling bereft.
So now we wait to see what goes down. We're pretty sure the foetus is in the right place, its just failing. The docs were threatening to do some harrowing stuff to Ellen to find out what is going on, but thankfully have relented. In the meantime we wait to see how things play out. She has further scans and blood tests to see how the hormone levels wind down. Seems like we'll always be looking at the numbers, watching their descent till the inevitable occurs. The idea of a miscarriage sounds like the most terrifying experience a hopeful mother to be can go through. I can only speculate and give E as much support as I can when it does.
Some of people who know me may be aware, others not. After a harrowing ectopic pregnancy in August last year, Ellen and I had been trying for a child. Following the initial panic last summer, Id come round to the idea of giving my parents the good news. Sadly, it all culminated in a late night visit to A&E for Ellen which I to my shame missed. Even now I have trouble forgiving myself that....
Anyway, fast forward to last winter and this time we're actually trying to conceive. She buys some of those pregnancy monitoring sticks to pee on and wows me with all the science involved. I provide the very willing support.. if you know what I'm saying..
There's some false starts as the New Year begins. E presents me with different numbered pee sticks and explains in detail what is happening with them: 'the indicator line is too vague on that one' 'it took to long to appear on this one'.. I nod my head in what hopefully looks like sagely understanding...
However during our Spring half term trip to the Isle of Wight there is some hope. She disappears to the toilet at 4am for a worryingly long period of time before returning to bed. Success! The indicator line appears where it should, and in the right time period. Ellen does a little shimmy of joy lying next to me and we both fall asleep again.
And so it goes. E thrills about her changing appearance, teaches me (and recently Xander) a little about the miracle of pregnancy. Being a bloke, its the mystery of mysteries to me. I watch as she digs out the maternity clothes and the baby bump band (holds it safely in place, you see) and we discuss baby names and due dates. We had the first couple of scans in the last two weeks which showed little. That concerned E, but senior sister Lee put her mind at rest "We never see anything after 4 or 5 weeks anyway". The bottom line is that nothing is showing in Ellen's fallopian tubes so we are both relieved. Still, with the absence of anything on screen, a viable pregnancy cannot be ruled in.
We have the blood tests to focus on though, once again Ellen explains the science to me... I pick up a smattering. The hormone levels are supposed to increase 66-100% every 48 hours, and initially they hit the lower end of the scale. They tail off to 40% and we lose heart, they rise back to 70% and it seems we're back in business! According to Ellen's research (she'll make an expert one day) its not that unusual to see a low hormone count, providing it eventually picks up again all hope isn't lost.
Last Wednesday E visited Kingston hospital for another scan. It was unclear but an indisctinct something could be seen in the womb. She was thrilled and I couldnt help but have her enthusiasm rub off onto me. The following Monday would be the clincher, a scan and blood test was planned and hopefully we'd see little junior with some clarity. I held E's hand and screwed up my eyes looking at the computer screen whilst the consultant manipulated the pregnancy scanner, we saw.. near enough exactly what we'd seen before. The indisctinct something was still an indistinct something, it seemed development had ground to a sudden halt. The blood test results were equally disappointing, according to Ellen's maths she expected them to rise 4000% or so, they rose just 70%. We left the hospital feeling broken, for Ellen this hadnt been entirely unexpected, her symptoms had seemly been on the wane she later told me. But I was feeling bereft.
So now we wait to see what goes down. We're pretty sure the foetus is in the right place, its just failing. The docs were threatening to do some harrowing stuff to Ellen to find out what is going on, but thankfully have relented. In the meantime we wait to see how things play out. She has further scans and blood tests to see how the hormone levels wind down. Seems like we'll always be looking at the numbers, watching their descent till the inevitable occurs. The idea of a miscarriage sounds like the most terrifying experience a hopeful mother to be can go through. I can only speculate and give E as much support as I can when it does.
No comments:
Post a Comment