Vertex

Vertex is my new favorite word in the English language.

This pregnancy has been nothing but one excitement after another. So I guess I wasn't entirely surprised when I went in for my 35th week "welcome back to medicine in the western world" sonogram and the ultrasound technician looked at me and said, "Well, you know the baby is breech, right?"

Um. No.

My doctor recommended a couple of in-home exercises and other things I could do to try to induce the baby to turn. The most humorous of these involved playing music in the "target area." While I dutifully followed his advice, Baby Girl was not impressed. At my 36th week checkup, the doctor confirmed that that baby was still breech. Week 37 came and went, with no apparent position change on the baby's part.

According to the baby books, only 3-4% of babies are in the breech, or feet first, position by the 37th week of pregnancy. Delivering a breech baby poses a number of risks, so nowadays, most obstetricians strongly advise delivery by Cesarean section. And while 30% of American women now deliver by C-section (I have been doing some research) this is most certainly not my ideal birth plan. There is a much longer recovery involved--which is time away from Bee, and an additional challenge in taking care of a newborn.

So I opted to schedule an external cephalic version, or ECV, where the doctor attempts to move the baby into the head down position but manipulating the outside of the pregnant woman's stomach. There are some minor risks involved, so the procedure can only take place at a hospital equipped for an emergency delivery.

My ECV was scheduled for today, which meant that my dear husband, who is most recently returned to the U.S. from Romania (he arrived yesterday!) could come with me for support. So this morning I was starved (no food or drink for 8 hours prior) registered, monitored, hooked up to an IV and ready to go. The doctor walks in with the ultrasound machine, puts it on my belly and says. "Vertex! Your baby has already turned head down."

Cue the hallelujah chorus. Somehow my baby flipped without my knowing it. No ECV necessary. No scheduled c-section. Merry Christmas indeed!

I know that she still could flip back, although it is unlikely, or that my labor could always end up in a c-section--and that there are a million other little possibilities to worry about but right now, I am just so happy that my baby girl can greet the world when she is ready to do so.

Count your blessings instead of sheep . . .

If you have ever watched the movie White Christmas, you know the above song. Oh to live in a Bing Crosby musical--everyone dressed smartly and the girls were girls and the guys were guys and all life's problems were resolved with a song. Unrealistic, I know, but these days, I am liking the idea of an escape from reality.

Fortunately escape I will, Tuesday next. I just have, oh, 17 million little things to do to get ready until then. Plus my office is beginning an outbreak of HN1N flu. So yes, it's time to go away. My dear husband was on the phone with the United airlines tonight to see whether I could change my flight for a day or two earlier, but, no luck.

Tonight I dragged out the suitcases and went digging for some potential post pregnancy jeans and sweaters. I piled up our passports and some American currency. I am making a start at getting everything ready to go. A timid start for sure, but it's better than nothing.

Really though, I need to take myself off to bed, because this Baby Girl I am carrying demands nine hours of sleep per night. Let's hope she keeps it up once she is actually born. And when I go to sleep, I will not count sheep or viruses or suitcases, but instead I will dream about the completely formed human inside me. My constant companion's fingers and eyelashes and lips and toenails. The hairs on her head. Her heart in my body. My blessing.

Her time

Every evening, once I put Miss Bee to bed and maybe, once in a blue moon, help out with the dishes, I settle in on the couch to check my favorite blogs and read the news. It has been, up until recently, my alone time.

However, starting a week or two ago, my constant companion has decided that evenings are a good time for kicks and wiggles. As I rush through the workday and dinnertime routine, I scarcely have time to notice when the baby is awake or asleep in my belly. On the couch though, in the stillness of the evening, my baby daughter dances.

I don't mind the company. I do mind her knees in my ribs.

Can't hardly zip my jacket!

Spoiled

I guess that I should be grateful that the U.S. government has flown me to Vienna to have an amniocentesis, but I'm not.

I have been so worried and upset for the past week, when a routine prenatal test came back with an elevated risk for my baby having a disability. The test showed a one in fifty risk. Statistically that is very small, and compounded by the fact that the test used in Romania is notoriously unreliable. The more reliable one, commonly administered in the U.S., is not available there.

This week has been my crucible, my shadow in the valley, my sleepless night, because while I am having this baby no matter what, I am terrified that my child could be sick. It's stupid really, when you think about it rationally, my child could, God forbid, contract a disease or a have an accident at any time in his or her life. It's fate ya know, so why worry? However we mothers are not rational creatures. Now that the procedure is over though, I somehow feel calmer, as if the test itself was all I needed to heal anything that could potentially harm my baby.

I took heart in the obstetrician's careful fetal assessment during the ultrasound. She said she thought that everything looked normal. This evening she came by the hospital to check on me (they are very conservative in Vienna and have women stay overnight in this hospital after an amniocentesis) and brought pictures of the baby; she had even taken the time to enlarge the best one. A souvenir.

A better souvenir would have been to let me keep the six inch long needle that she stuck into my stomach. She actually did the procedure twice, because the first time the baby moved too close. The second time was worse than the first. (It reminded me of when I was in labor with Bee and had to have the epidural catheter inserted twice, because the first time it was too low. What is it about me and my bad luck with needles?)

So now I am faced with waiting--waiting to get out of the hospital and go back to the nice hotel in the center of Vienna--waiting for my Mom, sister, and sister's boyfriend to arrive from Munich tomorrow (my knights in shining armor coming to save me from my tendency to worry far more than is good for me), and waiting for the preliminary results, which I hope and pray will alleviate my fears.

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Monday
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After four long nights filled with tossing and turning, far too many pastries and strudels, numerous phone calls back and forth with my doctor in Vienna, one achingly frustrating plane ride back to Bucharest with no news (I listened to Christmas carols the whole way because it was the only way I could manage to calm down), my preliminary test results are back. The ignominiously named yet very reliable FISH test says that my baby is just fine. Now I know just how I'll feel on resurrection morning.

(It's a girl!)

Overthinking it

I received my weekly pregnancy email from babycenter.com which happily informed me that my baby, in the 16th week of pregnancy, was now the approximate size and weight of an avocado.

That information is certainly all well and good, I can much more easily envision an avocado as opposed to earlier weeks, when my baby was compared to a lentil.

However, what my email service did not know, and could not have known, was that guacamole was on tonight's dinner menu. I had to eat my baby!

And that was very traumatizing.

Holding my breath

Next week will mark the very end of my first trimester of my second pregnancy in which the first three months of which have been a real nail biter, I tell ya.

This dear sweet tiny Christmas baby is trouble with a capital T. My husband is convinced that he is a boy, whereas I am certain that she needs to be a girl, or else Bee's six thousand pink outfits are really going to have to become the new blue.

When I was pregnant with Bee, everything went by the book; there were no scary episodes, no evening visits to the emergency clinic, no doubt that it might all come crashing down in an instant. (Ever seen a doctor do an ultrasound while talking on his cell phone at the same time? Come to Romania and you too can have this interactive experience!)

Thankfully, things have taken a turn for the better. Despite this, worry still seems to creep into the edges of my everyday life. I cannot control what happens. I can only do my best to take care of myself and pray.

And breathe out.