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.