In addition to the progesterone issues, it appeared that my fibroid was shrinking. According to the MRI it had been 10cm but was now only 8cm. She still firmly believed that it would not affect the pregnancy in any way due to it's position, but wanted to keep an eye on it just in case.
We nodded and agreed - better safe than sorry after all.
Despite the rocky beginning, the rest of the first trimester passed fairly quickly. Morning sickness did rear it's ugly head eventually, but as long as I made sure to snack on crackers and drink a coke every morning (It had to be coke, sprite only made me feel worse) I was able to keep it at bay. I did develop a food aversion to bacon, which made me very very sad since bacon is one of my favorite foods. I blame this aversion on my Grandmother who regaled me with stories of when she was pregnant with my Aunt L. Apparently she was working at a diner and she couldn't go near bacon. She couldn't stand the smell or taste of this. I think maybe my subconscious heard this and seized on it, because it wasn't too long that the smell of bacon (heck any pork product) cooking made me nauseous.
Also, I was so tired all the time that I ended up closing my etsy shop temporarily, and going to bed at 8pm - something I had laughed at when I was younger - became a regular occurrence.
We eventually started to tell more and more people that we were expecting. We knew that most prefer to wait until after the first trimester is over to make the announcement (since the first trimester is such a fragile period) but many of our friends had already put two and two together, so it made no sense to keep mum about it.
Around 12 weeks we went in for the First Trimester screening, where they do a blood test, and check your babies measurements, and somehow combine that information to figure out what your odds of having a child with certain genetic defects would be. We had done the blood test portion at the doctors, and then drove down to a lab in South Orange County for the Ultrasound portion.
By that point the baby no longer looked like a bean - instead it looked like a normal baby. It stretched and moved around, and it really enjoyed bouncing on my bladder. Thankfully their ultrasound machine was really strong though, so there was no need to drink a lot of water to get a good picture. Then towards the end of the ultrasound, the baby proved that yep, it was definitely a stubborn bugger. The tech was trying to get one last measurement, but instead of cooperating, the baby turned on it's side and presented it's backside to the tech. No amount of pocking or prodding or drinking cold water could make the baby stir.
The tech tried to pull up the results for the blood tests, so she could give us our risk estimate right then and there. Unfortunately my blood had not been processed yet, so we were told to give it a couple of days. A couple of days turned into a couple of weeks though, and whenever I would call in to find out the results I would get the runaround. The ultrasound place said that they didn't handle the results, my doctor said they never got the results from the ultrasound place. Friends and family tried to reassure me that everything was fine (I even had one well meaning friend tell me that if something was wrong, nature would have taken care of it already. I promptly flipped out because who would say such a thing to a pregnant woman?!?)
Finally I broke down and called the state only to discover that while they had received my bloodwork, they had never received the ultrasound, so they hadn't been able to figure out my results yet. I called the ultrasound place only to be given the run around yet again. Finally someone sent the ultrasounds to the state, and the doctor called me the next day to let us know everything was fine - the baby was growing as expected, and there were no signs of any severe defects.
Relieved, I promptly called my husband to let him know - and then I passed out on the couch for another nap.
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