Christmas Miracle!

Just a quick post to let you know that my wife was very concerned her Christmas would be ruined and be one of cheese and tomato sandwiches, but the obstetrician has assured her that the Christmas lunch with ham off the bone will be fine as long as she zaps it in the microwave!
Christmas has been saved!

First Obstetrician Meeting

Early rise this morning, we were up at 5am as we had our first meeting on the other side of the city at 7am with our obstetrician. My wife had selected Dr. Josephine Cheung as our obstetrician, and although she practices on the other side of the city I think it’s worth the extra drive. Dr. Cheung or Jo as she likes to be called, was really friendly and very knowledgeable and I think we be great to deal with over the next 7 or so months.

Jo likes to have an Ultrasound scan on the first meeting even though we only had one 2 weeks ago. Since the last scan just two weeks ago, the baby has gone from 1.87cm to 2.97cm and now has arms, legs and a big head. When the scan started the baby was really active and the scan was really clear. Amazingly the baby started waving hello to us within a few seconds of the scan starting! So obviously this baby is bordering on genius already. I’m hoping by the time 9 months comes around I will have it signing a few words.
Unfortunately none of this was captured and by the time Jo had finished checking things out the baby had become a little camera shy by below is the photo we did mange to capture.

You might be able to see one arm but most of the picture is off the head from sort of above.
Jo also recommended we try to get our 12 week scan done at a private clinic as they tend to have obstetricians working there and have quicker response times for the results. Problem with this is that we had left it a little too late and I ended up ringing up 5 different clinics in order to get an appointment for the 12th week of our pregnancy. But we are now booked into the Wesley Medical Clinic for the scan on the 10th of January and should get the results back that day, so I should have some great news for my family and friends when we go down to Adelaide on the 12th of January.

Choice of Obstetrician

Well nothing like leaving it to the last minute. Even though we’ve known about the need to ring up and book in an obstetrician for many weeks now, we only just did it.

As I wrote about earlier the drama is this. My wife wants a female obstetrician, which as you can imagine are far and few between and generally are booked up very quickly. To add to this complex situation there are no female obstetricians at the closest hospital, North West Hospital. So the dilemma is do we go to a hospital on the other side of the side some 40+kms away and have a female obstetrician or do we go to the closest hospital and have a male obstetrician.

Well after my wife rang around a few places, she decided on Dr Josephine Cheung whom practices on the other side of the city. So we are now getting booked in to deliver our baby at the Mater Women’s and Children Hospital which is one of the largest birthing hospitals in the southern hemisphere apparently.

Once nice benefit of this particular doctor is that she is a no gaps doctor to the whole pregnancy should be less costly that had we gone to the North West Hospital.

So we have our first appointment on Dec 20th at 7am! so that will be an early morning given we have to drive to the other side of the city for the 7am appointment. and then a couple weeks later we’ll have our 13th week scan. So two more ultrasounds coming up and a lot more water to be drunk.

Ectopic Pregnancy

On the weekend my wife started having a few pains of the side of abdomen, and come Monday they were causing her to lose a lot of sleep and I think beginning to worry her too much.

Tuesday morning the pains were still there and she had decided to take my advice and see a doctor. First problem was our normal doctor was away on holidays and his associate wasn’t working Tuesday. So we had to ring around a few other places to see a doctor, and of course everyone is booked out, but we did finally manage to book in to see one at 12:30.

Our 12:30 appointment turned into a 12:50 appointment by the time we were seen to, but then I must say unlike our normal doctor there was no sense of urgency or hurry to get thru our appointment. I’m not sure if that’s because we were pregnant or it was our first time at this doctors practice or if it just their way of seeing patient.

The doctor couldn’t pin point what was causing my wife’s pain in the side and couldn’t rule out an ectopic pregnancy. An ectopic pregnancy is one where the baby is growing in a place it shouldn’t be like the ovaries or fallopian tubes. Ectopic pregnancies extremely rarely work out, and with a high risk to the mother they are generally aborted asap. Soon I think it’s fair to say both my wife and I were concerned from the time the pain started as we had read about ectopic pregnancies and had been warned by our doctor about them as well. The doctor rang the closest ultrasound place up to see if they could fit us in. So off we went to have an ultrasound.

Upon arriving at Queensland Diagnostic Imaging place, the receptionist told us we may be there a while as they try to squeeze us in. By this time it was about 2pm and my wife had started to drink lots of water which was a requirement for the ultrasound. Patients coming and going and my wife had drunk one and a half litres of water when the technician called her name. So it’s now 2:30pm and we walk into the room where the ultrasound takes place. The  technician gets the scanner out and starts moving it over y wife’s stomach and then says, you need to drink more water. So back out to the waiting room we go with another one and a half litre bottle of water for my wife to consume over the next 20mins.

At this point my wife is starting to feel a bit bloated and needing to go to the toilet for some relief. Now I hadn’t been to the toilet since before we left home and had been holding off since seeing the doctor hours ago. So I couldn’t help it when I lent over to my wife and said, “I’m just heading off to the toilet I’ll be back”. Too make things worse I couldn’t help but smile when I said that as I realised she was busting to go herself but couldn’t.

3:15pm and my wife and I called up for a second attempt at the Ultrasound. The technician start playing with all the dials and then says geez your bladder is a bit full now as a large black hole appears on the screen showing all the water my wife had drunk. The technician started to push the ultrasound scanner around on my wife abdomens and I could see on the screen a little blob. The technician then started to point out that the blob was actually our baby and that it was in the normal place so it wasn’t an ectopic pregnancy. 

The technician took a few measurements on the screen and said we were actually 8wks and 1day pregnant, 2 days more advanced than we thought. He zoomed in a little and turned the screen around a bit for my wife and we saw a little flashing light in the middle of the blob. “That’s your baby’s heart beating” said the technician. To which I had a big smile on my face.

With the ultrasound completed we rang the doctor the next day to see if we needed to come back in to discuss the results of the ultrasound or do more tests to see what was causing this pain. The doctor wasn’t concerned anymore with the ultrasound showing everything was good and other tests coming back good so the doctor just said to rest up and and monitor the pain. And as of now the pain seems to be subsiding so maybe it could just be my wife’s body preparing for the up coming few months.

What not to eat when pregnant

My wife and I are used to checking what we eat more so than most as my wife has an allergy to nuts & seeds, this results in us having a slightly limited diet which normally isn’t a big issue. Add pregnancy to this mix and we are quickly having to modify the diet again to avoid listeria bacteria which isn’t good for our unborn baby.

My wife quickly found her normal lunch of a ham and cheese sandwich off the menu as was her favourite desert of soft serve ice cream. As an interim solution, good old baked beans were put on the menu for her lunches. This only lasted a day as the infamous side effects of eating baked beans played havoc on her digestive system.

After a little research we went shopping and bought a lot of fresh fruit, frozen yogurt, and  tomatoes. Still not entirely happy with the new menu, it will suffice for a week or so whilst she realigns her taste buds.

I found a couple of good websites talking about pregnancy diets and have listed them below.

• http://www.babycenter.com.au/pregnancy/nutrition/foodsafety/notsafetoeatexpert
• http://www.pregnancytoday.com/articles/pregnancy-nutrition-and-recipes/pregnancy-diet-don-ts-1842

Prenatal test results are in!

We went and saw our doctor again this morning to get the results of my wife's prenatal blood test. We’re happy to say that everything showed as expected with various vaccinations and negative infection results. These test were primarily looking for vaccination against the likes of rubella, chickenpox and hepatitis as well as checking for the presence of any sexually transmitted diseases like HIV and syphilis.

The doctor once again asked about where we were thinking of going to have the baby delivered and which obstetrician we would use. My wife simply hasn’t given it much thought so far other than she would prefer a female obstetrician. I might need to ring around a bit and get some more information regarding female obstetricians as our doctor only found one and as I said in a previous post she’s based in the city and delivers baby's on the other side of the city which makes for a bit of a long nervous drive for me when the time comes, especially if it turns out to be peak hour!

I think our next appoint with our doctor will be in 4 weeks time, by then we will be 9 weeks pregnant and should be passed the likelihood of an ectopic pregnancy.

I also asked the doctor this morning about when we should let our family's know the good the news of the upcoming addition to our family. In his opinion there was no need to hold back from telling anyone until the end of the first trimester, he said its no more likely to have major dramas before the 13th week or after 13th week. Every time my wife sits down with her family and has a chat you can see she's struggling to keep the news in. I suspect we wont be able to keep the news to ourselves until the 13th week but this then causes a dilemma for me. if we wait for the 13th week, it just happens that my wife and I are flying to the city where my family lives and I could tell them face to face. If we let the cat out of the bag before then I would feel somewhat compelled to tell my family but it would mean doing it over the phone which isn't as desirable. What to do, what to do…

When to let everyone know you’re pregnant?

Many people might disagree but I think I’m pretty good at keeping information to myself, but  the last week and a bit since we found out that we are pregnant I’ve found it really hard to not say anything.

It’s like everyone already knows and is waiting for us to announce it. Every time someone asks me what I’ve been up to all I can think about is the fact we are pregnant. As we are in contact with my wife’s family almost every second day,  its always on our minds to watch what we say.

After the first trimester is finished at 13 weeks it is generally considered a safe time to let people know as you have got over a lot of the initial dangers. The trouble is that its hard not to talk about this exciting time of our lives, and you dare not tell even one person in case they let the cat out of the bag and find that your big news has become yesterdays big news.

So this got me thinking about the Pros and Cons…

Advantages to Telling Early

• Lots of support early in pregnancy
• Able to share your good news and excitement
• Earlier offers of physical help
• More advice from others about practitioners
• Help with early decisions
• If you miscarry, you will have support from everyone

Disadvantages to Telling Early

• Too much advice
• Good news travels fast, you may not be the first to tell someone
• If you miscarry everyone knew you were pregnant

Advantages to Waiting to Tell

• Time to digest the news
• Make decisions without input of others
• If you miscarry you don't have to retract the pregnancy announcement

Disadvantages to Waiting to Tell

• No help/support from others
• If you miscarry everyone wonders why you are sad, and you have to backtrack your explanation

There seems to be a lot of advantages but there is some big disadvantages, especially if we are unlucky enough to have a miscarriage, although I think that if we are unlucky and have a complication that I think my wife will need the support of her family anyways.

I think if we can keep it quiet for another 7 weeks my wife and I will hold out until after the first round of scans and tests and then let the world know…

Pregnancy book

Last night my wife and I bought the fourth edition of what is really a fantastic series of books. Titled “What to expect when you’re expecting” it details what you need to know, what you should know and what’s help to know at every point of your pregnancy.  My sister in law has the third edition and we had a look at that a while ago and so we just had to buy the latest edition for ourselves. I really highly recommend it!

Confirmation, we are pregnant!

I convinced my wife to take a second pregnancy test last night just to rule out any false positives, and sure enough we had a second positive result.

We were booked in to see our doctor anyways so he also did a test but felt it may be just a little early to show up on his test as we are only 4 weeks pregnant but amazingly enough his test show positive as well confirming our lives were about to change in a big way.

When going through the list of things that were going to need be organised over the next nine months with our doctor, and interesting question arose. Do we want to have a male or female obstetrician? Of course my wife wants a female obstetrician but there’s catch the only female obstetrician is in the city, and for her to deliver the baby we would have to be delivering it in a hospital on the other side of the city. So the question is should we be thinking of the nearest hospital which happens to be a specialised baby hospital or should we be thinking of a female obstetrician. I think it probably will come down to my wife and if she could get over her issue of having a male oncologist.

Life is just beginning…

In more ways that one. After trying to get pregnant for just a couple of months my wife woke me up yesterday to tell me the exciting news. She is pregnant! So not only is a new life beginning in her, but also our lives as parents are just beginning

I thought I would start this blog as not only a journal of my experiences as an expecting parent but also as a way of sharing what I learn with others. So some of you may think that some of my point are kind of common knowledge but they are new to me, and more than likely new to someone reading this.

After finding out the good news yesterday I embarked on a little research and found that we are actually 4 weeks pregnant already as doctors count from the womans last cycle and not when you think you conceived.
Now called me cautious, call me skeptical, or even a party pooper, but I said to my wife that she should wait a few more days and then test again just in case there was any false positives in her test.

From what I’ve read, at the end of this week we’ll be 5 weeks pregnant and the second test should confirm everything, so we’ll book a time with our doctor and really get things rolling.

One of our concerns if that my wife is on Zoloft anti depressants, which shouldn’t effected our unborn baby but one study though not conclusive said it could cause lung defects. Will have to look into that a bit more, as we will need to weigh up the effects of having my wife off of the antidepressants with the slim risk for the baby.

Ok so now you know where we are heading, I’ll see what the next 8 months brings.