Today Jon and I had an appointment to see Mr O’Sullivan at the Hospital. I had been looking forward to seeing him again, since he has been aware of our situation from the very beginning (he was the one who recommended IVF in the first place, and he was the consultant that saw us all the way through the treatment). However, after waiting for a little while in the ante-natal ward at the hospital, we were called in by a different consultant. How disappointing. And to make matters worse, she was Indian -I believe, with quite a thick accent. I boast sometimes of how good my English is, but at the end of the day, it is still my second language and I do struggle with thick accents.
All in all the appointment went well, although we had a little issue with the urine sample. I had been asked to bring a sample, so I reused the bottle that the midwife originally gave me and asked me to reuse for further appointments. I don’t know if you recall, but I already blogged about how unbelievable we found it to be asked to reuse the same bottle again. In that occasion, the sample came back with a high raised level of protein and I was asked to retake the sample again (the results for that one came back completely fine). Madeleine, the midwife, said that it could be that the sample was contaminated, but she still asked me to reuse the bottle! So this morning, as I didn’t have any other container to carry the sample, I decided to use the same bottle… And guess what: It came back with high level of protein again! So I had to give two further samples there and then (and it was quite challenging to urinate in those small bottles in a public WC)… What a waste of time… I am pretty sure that the results will come back as normal, and it’s just that that bottle was contaminated in the first place. I have now thrown it away and next time I go to the GP I will ask for a couple more. I am never reusing a sample bottle again!
And what else… The consultant looked at my 20-week scan measurements and drew some dots in a diagram. She didn’t tell us what they meant, but she was eventually happy with the results. I say “eventually” because she was doing them wrong at the beginning and had to go and ask Mr O’Sullivan about it. My guess is that if the dots fall within the area of the line with the shadow (see photo below) then it means that the babies are growing at the correct speed. And they are! 🙂
We talked about twin pregnancies and how the delivery will be. Basically, if everything goes well I can go as far as 38-39 weeks, but they’ll never let me get to or over 40. Also, if Dixie (for them, Dixie is Twin A) is in a normal delivery position (head first), the delivery will be natural. However, having a natural delivery increases the chances of Pixie getting a bit distress and in that situation, if she is not in the right position, they’ll do a C-section. All of this will happen in an operating theatre, s0 I don’t have to be moved in mid-delivery. They recommend having a epidural, although I need to research a bit about it, as I think I read somewhere that the chemicals in the epidural can interfere with your breastfeeding, making it very difficult to breastfeed straight away.
And nothing much more happened. I had my blood pressure taken and it was a tiny bit high at the beginning. I think this is because we decided to walk to the hospital (it’s so near!) and by the time I got there I was a bit out of breath. I was seen by the nurse straight away and she took my blood pressure, and that’s why I think it was high. Unfortunately, the consultant then thought that there was something wrong, and I had it taken again, and then it was normal. She has asked me to have my blood pressure taken every two weeks now. The problem I see with this is that I am not sure what constitutes “higher than normal” blood pressure during pregnancy, and what should I do with the results when I have them?
And that’s it for the appointment. I’ve got another one on the 26th, and this time I am going to ask the nurse at reception to see Mr O’Sullivan, even if I have to wait longer. It’s not that I didn’t like this lady, but sometimes I struggled to understand what she was saying. Thank god Jon was there with me! 🙁
And what else has been happening this week? I am still having mood up and downs, and the problem is that I am aware of them now, whereas I never used to be before. I try to calm myself down, but only after I have realised how much of a bitch I was! The other day at work I shouted to pretty much everyone. They don’t take it seriously, as I’ve always been “red blooded” anyway, but I don’t want them to start thinking that I’ve got issues either! In addition to this, I’ve also been feeling a bit “meh” (the other side of the coin to shouting, I suppose).
I will do my weekly photo update of the belly another night this week, as I am quite tired now!
