New Approach

I've had a bit of a 'revelation' this evening... I am very much of the school of thought of enjoying pregnancy right from the word go, getting excited, thinking of baby as a BABY from the start etc etc i.e. not thinking "I might have a miscarriage so I'd better not get too attached." If I had miscarried (as I have done, three times), I'd've been devastated, whether or not I had 'let myself get attached' to that baby.

I feel like I should take the same approach to birth... if I don't have a homebirth, I will feel sad about that whatever the circumstances, whether I have planned my homebirth and got excited about it or tried not to get attached to the idea in case it doesn't work out. So I've decided to plan for Starbaby to be born at home, get in things we need to buy like a new hose and bath thermometer etc etc, do my hypnobirthing preparation, read happy homebirth stories, say out loud that I'm planning a homebirth... I accept there's a chance a homebirth may not happen, but that chance is there for everyone to some degree, and there's no point focusing on that right now. I owe it to my little boy to do everything I can to stay as positive as possible, and I know that homebirth-y things will go a long way in helping me keep up that attitude.

I may as well approach the 3 months until I give birth in the more positive way I can, and hopefully that familiarity of planning a homebirth will be a comfort and reassurance, too. :)

Better Scan

Our 26 week scan on 18th December brought better news than our 24 week one. We saw the consultant we saw at 20 weeks, whom I much prefer to the 'doom and gloom-er' we saw at 24 weeks. She talked through everything she saw during the scan, listened carefully to me and gave us the information we asked for.

Starbaby's measurements, by my dates (which she accepted were probably the most reliable) are looking much much better.... more like 25th centile (or more) than the 5th centile they were coming up as 2 weeks before. The consultant said they were averaging at about 25 weeks and 6 days... and on the day of our scan I was 26 weeks and 1 or 2 days pregnant - 4 days behind average is of no concern at all! We will still be kept a close eye on, but if more scans show his measurements are just 'small side of normal' there's no way he classes as IUGR.

His fluid was over 11cm rather than the 7cm of 2 weeks previous... low end of normal but over 5th centile which classes as normal.

The consultant said that generally, if a 2 vessel cord is associated with a major (or even minor) abnormality, there would be a sign of something not being right with the heart or kidneys. Starbaby's are looking perfect so she seemed to think it was very likely to be just a 'variant of the normal'.

She didn't even seem to consider his talipes to be particularly relevant as a marker, since it was unilateral.

Everything she said tied in with the theories I had developed after reading and thinking a lot following our 24 week scan. It was such a relief to be seen by someone with a much more positive outlook. It has given us hope that Starbaby will be born perfectly healthy, just with a slightly wonky left foot.

Feeling more positive. Long may it last. Next scan 3.5 weeks after the last, on 11th January.

Superhero

A fab poem, copied from here.

"Superheroes" 

by Rachel Gessey

As night time fell and it was time to sleep,

She was tucked up in bed, not making a peep,

After a bath and a story, milk and a kiss,

Her adventures in dreamland she didn't want to miss!

On with the first boot, then with the other,

She smiled at her mummy and pulled up the covers,

For Jaime was a special girl who wore boots and a bar,

So she could jump really high and run really far,

So she could hop and skip and dance all day

And be a "superhero in my dreams" she would say.

A superhero? I hear you shout

What's this superhero business about?

You see, every night when she closed her eyes,

She'd dream that her boots made her fly through the skies,

She'd surf on the water and ski on the snow,

And fly higher and higher - to space she would go!!

She'd see mountains and rivers, deserts and trees,

Fly with birds and aeroplanes over the seas....

And as morning approached and she'd stir in her bed,

She'd remember her dreams and what her mummy always said.

"That special girls and boys who wear bedtime shoes

Will grow up big and strong and be whatever they choose..."

So to all you "superheroes" who wear their boots at night,

You are amazing and fantastic, oh and super, that's right!

Welcome to Holland

I have just read an excellent piece of writing, which I wanted to record here so I can look at it in the future. We don't yet know whether Starbaby's 'differences' will be small or large, but this really made me stop and think...

Welcome To Holland 

By Emily Perl Kingsley 

c1987 by Emily Perl Kingsley. All rights reserved .

I am often asked to describe the experience of raising a child with a disability - to try to help people who have not shared that unique experience to understand it, to imagine how it would feel. It's like this......

When you're going to have a baby, it's like planning a fabulous holiday - to Italy. You buy a bunch of guide books and make your wonderful plans. The Coliseum. The Michelangelo David. The gondolas in Venice. You may learn some handy phrases in Italian. It's all very exciting.

After months of eager anticipation, the day finally arrives. You pack your bags and off you go. Several hours later, the plane lands. The stewardess comes in and says, "Welcome to Holland."

"Holland?!?" you say. "What do you mean Holland?? I signed up for Italy! I'm supposed to be in Italy. All my life I've dreamed of going to Italy."

But there's been a change in the flight plan. They've landed in Holland and there you must stay.

The important thing is that they haven't taken you to a horrible, disgusting, filthy place, full of pestilence, famine and disease. It's just a different place.

So you must go out and buy new guide books. And you must learn a whole new language. And you will meet a whole new group of people you would never have met.

It's just a different place. It's slower-paced than Italy, less flashy than Italy. But after you've been there for a while and you catch your breath, you look around.... and you begin to notice that Holland has windmills....and Holland has tulips. Holland even has Rembrandts.

But everyone you know is busy coming and going from Italy... and they're all bragging about what a wonderful time they had there. And for the rest of your life, you will say "Yes, that's where I was supposed to go. That's what I had planned."

And the pain of that will never, ever, ever, ever go away... because the loss of that dream is a very very significant loss.

But... if you spend your life mourning the fact that you didn't get to Italy, you may never be free to enjoy the very special, the very lovely things ... about Holland.

Please be our miracle

I don't know what to think right now. I certainly don't know what to write.

The odds just seem so stacked against our little boy being OK.

I've been doing some reading online - please DON'T tell me not to google... if you were told your child potentially had a fatal or life limited condition, you'd do the same... I need to try to understand what is happening - and it seems to alternately lift me up and knock me down. I read success stories of babies born after IUGR and low fluid (albeit tiny and early)... then I read things like the symptoms of triploidy (which is incompatible with life) where the most common ultrasound markers are IUGR, low fluid and 2 vessel cord.

People say "try to enjoy your pregnancy", but honestly, that is FAR easier said than done. ENJOY being in a situation where I don't know if my child is going to live or die? Or if he does live, how badly he might be affected by whatever condition it is he may have? It's not that simple. This pregnancy has been nothing but stressful. Imagine being told you have a high chance of stillbirth... and then imagine how you feel every time your baby doesn't move inside you for a few hours. This is absolute HELL.

I am struggling a lot with jealousy. I hate feeling this way. I am not normally a jealous person... I am an eternal optimist and usually very happy with my lot in life. But now I see people with 2 healthy children, or people with pregnancies that have very few bumps in the road, and all I can think is "Why us?" Why my little boy? Why does almost everyone have a smooth pregnancy with no more worries than whether they'll get past 12 weeks OK or how to cope with morning sickness, but I have one that is absolutely fraught with worries?

There is a chance little Starbaby will be perfectly OK, bar talipes. Right now, talipes seems like a DODDLE compared to the other issues we may be facing. At least if we're taking him to hospital for weekly casting appointments then that means he is alive and has made it through pregnancy safely!

People tell me I'll love my little boy, no matter what... and of course I will. But my next thought is "but will he even survive for us to get to know each other?" What if he is diagnosed with a condition that leaves him terribly disabled and with a very short lifespan? How on earth will that affect our family? How will that affect Big Sis?

Big Sis talks about Starbaby a lot. I mean, a LOT. She's talked about him even more since everything kicked off on Wednesday, totally unprompted."I'd like to share my bedroom with Starbaby when he's born", "I'm saving my clothes from when I was little so Starbaby can wear them" (not sure what he's going to make of the pink spotty socks ;)), "I'm going to have a little brother!" and last night "I hope that Starbaby grows bigger and bigger in your tummy... I'm keeping my fingers crossed." How on earth would she cope if we lost him? 

We've waited so long for this little boy... nearly 2 years of trying to conceive, 2 miscarriages, all that stress with the subchorionic haematoma until 14 weeks pregnant. Why can things not go smoothly now?!

Of course, I'm wondering if there's a link between Starbaby's possible 'differences' and my miscarriages. Was Big Sis just 'the one that got through' and I'm destined to struggle repeatedly to carry a healthy baby to term?

Please don't tell me to stay strong... I can't always be strong. Please don't tell me to stay positive... I'm trying my damndest but it's bloody hard when faced with all this adversity.

Statistics do NOT help me. Yes, I know that only a small % of pregnancies have a triploidy or trisomy disorder. But that doesn't comfort me in the slightest. Two of our miscarriages have been when we had a theoretical risk of only 5%, I had a 1% chance of a subchorionic haematoma, a 0.1% chance of talipes and a 1% chance of a single umbilical artery. Yet we have had ALL of those things. You can see why I find no reassurance in statistics whatsoever. 

My little boy. It's just not fair. Please be OK. Please be our miracle. 

Scans and worries

At our 20 week scan, Starbaby was diagnosed with talipes, probably just in his left foot. It took us some time to get our head around it, but we did lots of research and were feeling pretty OK about it. Then we went for a 24 week scan and 3 other markers were picked up... Starbaby has a 2 vesesl umbilical cord (rather than 3), his growth has slowed a lot (IUGR) and he has very low fluid. These additional 3 marker mean his risk of a more serious chromosomal or genetic condition is much higher. There is also a much higher than average chance of premature birth and stillbirth.

It has totally knocked us for six.

We have waited so long for our little boy - 2 years of trying including 2 miscarriages - and we love him SO much. I can't bear to think of anything happening to him, or of him being terribly unwell. I'm now 25 weeks pregnant and our next scan is in 9 days. I have been resting, upping fluid, protein, iron and fruit/veg intake, and hoping, hoping, hoping...

Starbaby

Introducing our Starbaby:

Currently this blog is private... a place for me to record my thoughts and research on things Starbaby-related. Perhaps one day it will be shared - we shall see...