Livin' on a Prayer

Wow!  I have been a bad, bad blogger.  No excuses though.

Last time I wrote I was nearly 12 weeks.  This was me today at 20 weeks (halfway there):

The 12 week scan went well.  Our Down Syndrome risk came back as 1:5700 so we felt happy to share our news.  Posting it on Facebook and telling people at work was an amazing moment I feared might never come.  Here is "Hernlet" at 12 weeks:

Health wise has been pretty easy on me so far.  Apart from the chronic tiredness (so far the 2nd trimester energy lift has passed me by) I've been feeling pretty good, although I never realised I could pee so much!  There have been a couple of scares though.  The first one was about 14 weeks: I went to the bathroom and noticed there was blood in the bowl.  Of course I froze.  Trying to keep calm I asked Joe to take me to the Royal Women's Hospital Emergency Department.  I thought this would be the quickest way to get help, given that there wouldn't be car accident victims, assault victims or people with random illnesses waiting there. Well...3 1/2 hours later we were finally seen by a doctor.  He examined me to see where the blood was coming from, causing me a massive amount of pain in the process (and almost causing Joe to knock him unconscious).  We had told him about my miscarriages and he then proceeded to tell us it looked like "the same thing might be happening again".  This was an incredibly stupid thing to say, as my miscarriages were all earlier than 9 weeks.  Further, while I understood that "threatened miscarriage" was just the medical term used for bleeding during pregnancy, Joe didn't, and was understandably freaked out. Luckily the Dr did give me a scan and there was Hernlet, moving around as if nothing had happened.  As we left the hospital Joe paged my OB who said that if it happened again I should just call him straight away and he would fit me in for a scan.

A few weeks ago it happened again.  I was busy getting ready for work and felt a gush.  For a second I thought I'd wet myself but I hadn't been feeling the urge to pee.  When I got to the bathroom I saw a big bloodstain on my underpants.  Joe called the OB and he said to come in at 9 and he would do a scan.  Again, Hernlet was moving around happily.

Now we are coming up to the 20-week or 'morphology' scan on Wednesday, which also happens to be our third wedding anniversary.  Feeling a bit nervous as I don't know how I'd cope if things went really wrong after getting to this point.  The fact that I've been feeling flutters on and off since about 17 weeks is somewhat reassuring...but that niggling doubt remains.  For now I can just hope that Hernlet continues to be the little fighter he or she has been so far.   Or as Bon Jovi put it: