14w1d: All is Well

I have been away for far too long. One problem is, I'd rather catch up on all of your blogs rather than write my own. Still, I want to keep this blog as a pregnancy journal, too, so I need to get back to it.

Today was 14w1d and I had my second "normal" OB appointment. My regular OB was booked, so I saw a second nurse midwife. It was a quick appointment in which they basically took my vitals (BP 90-something/50-something), had me pee in a cup, and weighed me (up 3.6 lbs by my home digital scale, essentially the same on their scale). The midwife then came in and answered a few questions that I had. I then asked her to show me how to palpate the uterus at this stage. As she explained it, I'm not supposed to be feeling for a firm edge, but rather for something soft, almost like a loaf of bread. My fingertips should really only be pressing in an inch or so. It is pretty subtle, and I'm not sure that I can find it again. She said that the size of my uterus is appropriate for 14 weeks.

My favorite part of the appointment was hearing the heartbeat again. I love that sound! She used an external Doppler and found it easily. I was slightly distracted because she kept asking me questions about my job during that part, and it felt kinda rude to say, "Um, can we just be quiet and listen for a minute, please..." She didn't actually measure the heart rate, but it definitely sounded nice and fast.

I confessed to her that I have cheated a bit on the deli meat restriction in that I have eaten a few turkey sandwiches here and there. She said it should be fine, and that the real prohibition is going to a deli where the meat sits out and they carve it in front of you. Still, the sandwiches I have eaten are usually from an internal catering team, so who knows how safe they really are. I'm feeling pretty relaxed about it, though. I have never gotten food poisoning from a sandwich, as far as I know. I did ask her to order a CMV antibody test on me. I will feel a lot more relaxed running around the hospital next month if I know for sure that I have a pre-exisiting immunity to CMV. It's the primary infection that can be most dangerous to a fetus, so I hope to be IgG positive (ie already immune) so that I won't have to worry about it. I will get this drawn on the same day as my AFP test. I have to do it a few days earlier than normal (a week from Friday at 15w3d) because I will be out of town thereafter for about a week.

My new job is going well. My main complaint is that I have an office but NO COMPUTER!! It was ordered July 1st or so (why not earlier, I don't know -- I reminded several people about it many times during the month of June) but then it was ordered via an incorrect mechanism and it still hasn't arrived. It is driving me insane to work at borrowed desks, etc. Half the time some aspect of the system is not set up on that computer, there is no printer connected, etc etc.

I still need to tell our breast oncology group's leader (Dr. P) about the pregnancy. I decided to wait until today's appointment, but now that it is done and all is well, I am eager to tell her. Otherwise, I'm afraid that I will leave for my week-long conference on August 2nd and return on August 11th looking really obviously pregnant (17 weeks). To my eyes, I am already getting pretty thick through the waist, but it is not an obvious "baby bump" quite yet. I still wear my normal clothes, and I think it just looks like I have gained some weight. I bought several of those juniors-style flow-y shirts that will help me look more pregnant than chubby, but I don't want to wear them to work until I tell Dr. P first. I just need to decide if I want to set up a formal meeting, or just hope to pull her aside in the hallway at some point. A formal meeting seems a bit awkward, but she's not the type of person to ever be just sitting alone in her office and available to chat for a few minutes (my preferred way of dealing with it).

I'm not sure whether my colleagues will merely divide up my patients during maternity leave, or whether they will hire back the temporary physician who just left when I started (a 70+ year old retired oncologist who had filled in for an entire year.) I feel bad for making the patients see so many different doctors, so in some ways he would be the ideal person to see the again.

Anyway...must go to bed. I am actually driving my parents and sister to the airport in the morning before work, so I will be up nice and early!