Weeks 33 and 34

Longish swaths of time go by sometimes between my posts. As a result, this post combines the updates on last week’s and this week’s visits to our doctors, weeks 33 and 34 respectively.

These gaps in communication are not entirely due to laziness. Sometimes, I go through a few days where anxiety and fear get the better of me and things just seem too hard. When I am like this, I hunker down with Demian, who can make me feel better, and prefer to put off writing for a while.

All this anxiety management is exhausting and can make me ridiculously sensitive. Little things set me off. We are having a new oven installed and the guy who called yesterday to install it wasn’t precisely nasty, but he wasn’t nice either. Upon hanging up the phone, I promptly burst into tears. Demian was understandably perplexed when I babbled a tear-drenched explanation about the mean oven guy, but his long-suffering patience came to the rescue.

Today, that reaction seems absurd. That’s because today is a good day. I have no idea why or when good and bad days arrive, they just do. I think the fact of making it to week 34 represents both relief and dread for me and that is at the heart of the sensitivity. Clearly, it is a milestone to have gotten this far. But given our history and my fear - rational or otherwise - of umbilical cords, an incipient dread also grows in parallel with the relief with every passing day. I try to take all this in stride and submit to the facts of the situation as my ultimate guide.

And the facts of the situation are quite good, all things considered. In week 33, last week, we had our second appointment with the fetal cardiologist. In fact, we got a two for one. We had a scheduled appointment with the older cardiologist. When the older cardiologist found out that we were going to be at the clinic for a few hours more, whiling away the time before our later appointment with Dr. Valdecasas (my OB/GYN), he asked if we could come back in the intervening time to have the younger cardiologist take a look at our case. He explained that these days, it was rare to find a really interested, committed young doctor and that this young cardiologist was one of those. He knew that our case, given its extreme rarity, would be of great interest to the young cardiologist. Also, the younger doctor had been there for the first appointment.

The older doctor’s request was sweet and reminded me of my parents’ views on the wayward habits of today’s younger medical generation, so we agreed. Also, having two specialists look at our baby’s heart instead of one seemed like an obvious bonus to both Demian and me.

When the younger cardiologist examined the baby, he took his time with the cardiac ultrasound, sharing a lot of explanatory information with us. His enthusiasm for his subject was palpable; he said that the heart was the most perfect machine ever made. If you think about it, it is pretty amazing. A baby’s heart is formed in week 3 of pregnancy. It starts beating around week 5 and never stops again until the person dies – hopefully after a long and happy life. During the entire intervening period, the heart never ever takes a break.

The cardiologist said that in the course of the three weeks that had elapsed between our first appointment with him and this one, he would have expected there to be some signs of cardiac distress. In these cases, things gradually get more difficult for the baby to manage as the pregnancy progresses. In the one other case both specialists had seen, there were already signs of some cardiac suffering at this stage. In our baby, there are still no discernible signs of distress. In fact, he said, one could argue that there was a very slight improvement, in that the duct that had formed spontaneously between the two ventricles now appears proportionally smaller than three weeks ago. The news could not have been better.

This week, week 34, we saw Dr. Valdecasas (daughter) for our weekly scan. The baby now weighs about 2.1 kilograms and all still appears to be well. We are keeping to the plan, just taking every day as it comes and monitoring the baby closely. He still moves quite a lot, which is how I do my own monitoring. When he doesn’t move for a while, I rely on the top-notch fetal Doppler monitor that Valdecasas was kind enough to lend me a couple of weeks ago.

This Thursday, we have the scheduled 30 minute heart monitoring to check for abnormalities. We will be waiting to see if the baby can perform a hat trick and win the “number of kicks” contest three weeks running. In the meantime, friends, family, Demian and TV make up my anxiety management arsenal. As an added bonus, my mother arrives tomorrow and there is really nothing better than that.

Until the next post, take care of yourselves and be well.