500 and 500 more.

C & I went to my uncle’s wedding yesterday, it was exhausting - travelling, making small talk, the usual family stuff, standing around for hours - I feel so drained today. C is being very difficult, emotional & clingy.

The DBTs are so strong now, the last week or so has been the scariest of any pregnancy I’ve had. I’m not sleeping properly, every morning I wake up and think that the baby has just disappeared. I have six days until the big anomaly scan & I’ve been running through every bad scenario in my head, I’m truly terrified.

I still don’t look pregnant (19 weeks & a day) & my current obsession is that the baby isn’t growing at all.

I hate pregnancy, I am really, really bad at it.

… it does happen and it makes me happy! Thalia & Jen.

I have a stinking cold, except it isn’t a cold (habitual aborters don’t suffer from such mundane complaints) its toxoplasmosis … yup that’s what it is.

(3 cats + a few hours on google. I was freaked enough to call my midwife (I’m usually fairly self contained in my panics, operating on the belief that if I say it I make it so) she wasn’t concerned.) 

I’ve been pretty good with the doppler, I use it probably 2 out of 3 days (in secret because we haven’t told C anything). Every single time I pick it up I have a flash of fear, not wanting to know that there’s anything wrong, most of the time I am temporarily reassured that it is all okay.

The heart rate was 178 at 9 weeks (fine according to this), since then it as steadily decreased (again okay I think) through the 160s, then the 150s and last week the 140s. This morning when I checked it was 131 - which fucking terrified me - what if it doesn’t stop decreasing? Will it stop all together? I keep reading that the normal range is 120-160, the mean is 145 with a range of about 25 bpm either side, fetal bradycardia is defined as moderate below 110bmp and severe below 100bmp. So 130 is fine, but I want it to be average though, I want 145 - it has become my talisman. Anyway I spent the morning googling ‘early fetal bradycardia’ (heart block, AV malformations, tetrology of Fallot, maternal autoimmune disease, chronic hypoxia, aneuploidies), drank a can of coke, did the laundry … and listened again 138, then 143, then 147. Poor kid.

Doesn’t really help that my mum said it was slow & it is probably a boy - boys aren’t favoured by my extended family - she doesn’t get how completely uninterested in the sex I am. I mean the hubris to assume that I could have a preference.

I’m also freaking about the size of its head.

Friday was the EDD of the last pregnancy, what should have been been sweet the end of IVF#1. I probably would have had a two week old baby by now, we’d all be exhausted & overwhelmed & so happy.

I haven’t really known what to say about it, Friday is my busy day rushing from place to place, I barely had time to think. Last week also marked 16 weeks in this pregnancy, the point at which I thought I might feel more secure.

I think about that baby every day, I loved her, I loved the idea of her. I suppose I projected a lot of my feeling about C onto her - she was brave & plucky & a fighter, we went through tough times together. Of course C & I came through relatively unscathed, E didn’t.

I suppose there isn’t much to say anyway.

I love you E, I miss you, I wanted it to be different, I’m sorry if I let you down. C talks about you ‘her little baby’ often, she doesn’t understand why you aren’t here.

My fucking cat has gone missing … again … she has a cruciate ligament injury & I keep envisioning her injured, lying somewhere unable to get home.

My 20 week anomaly scan is booked for 6-6-06. Ha!

I’m feeling pretty miserable.