On Thursday night, just as I was getting ready to turn off the light and go to sleep, I thought I’d give the doppler another try. I found my own heart beat easily but just off to the side was a softer, faster sound. Then it disappeared. I held my breath as I hunted around for it and after a minute or two, it seemed to drift back. It grew louder and then very loud and then softer and then vanished. I called out to the husband and he came running in, fairly convinced that I’d just found my own heart beat. I held the doppler in the same spot and waited. Sure enough, the sound came back again, grew louder then very loud then softer until it vanished again. I checked the LCD display and it registered 150s which is definitely within the desired range. We listened to the little guy doing laps (“Tour de Uterus”) for a while – it’s truly the best sound ever. He was very active, just moving around and around. No wonder I’m so tired!

I’ve been feeling a bit down this week for a variety of reasons; impending first anniversary of losing Max, last week’s shitty nuchal translucency results and the arrival of a new nephew that I can’t quite bring myself to go and see.  I feel like a bitch for keeping away but I can’t help it.  Had a big cry this morning for no real reason except that “life is unfair, etc.”.  I’m so lame sometimes.  After the dodgy test results, the obstetrician at the ultrasound centre told me that if the baby’s heart rate had been lower, we’d have fallen into the low risk category and I was happy with this because I firmly believed that my asthma medications were to blame for elevating the heart rate.  After a couple of conversations with my other medical professionals (read: them pushing me to make an appointment for CVS), I refused any further invasive testing and they essentially agreed to allow me to wait until the 18 week ultrasound to check for signs of trisomy 13 birth defects.  I was thinking about this early in the week and wondered if my refusal of further testing was actually an informed decision or whether I was just acting out of emotion.  I contacted the geneticist I saw last year after losing Max and she made an appointment to see me right away.  She explained the results to me and pointed out that while it’s completely true that Ventolin does cross the placenta and does increase fetal heart rate, the problem wasn’t just with the baby’s heart rate but also with the free beta-HCG MoM level being lower than normal range and this in combination with the FHR was what put us in the high risk category for trisomy 13.  Her advice was “this pregnancy is precious” and that we “definitely should not risk having the CVS test” and that she would far prefer that we “wait until the 18 week ultrasound and only consent to having the amniocentesis if the obstetrician finds something dreadful that justifies the invasive test”.  I am so glad I saw her about this because she made me feel that I had made the right decision in refusing the CVS and at least now when my other doctors push me again to have further testing, I can show that I’ve made an informed decision rather than an emotional one.

While I was on sick leave last week (back when I falsely believed that the only issue with the NT test results was an elevated fetal heart rate), I got online and ordered a fetal heart doppler.  I figured that if I could measure the baby’s heart rate and see for myself that it wasn’t consistently higher than normal, then I’d feel a whole lot better about this baby.  So my doppler arrived yesterday and we very excitedly put in the new batteries and squeezed the gloopy gel on my belly.  Well… the doppler is nothing but short of brilliant at picking up my own heart beat but so far the baby’s heart beat has remained completely elusive.  My very clever husband worked out that it’s probably the placenta (hence my heart beat) sitting in the way and when I pulled out copies of all of the many ultrasound reports we’ve had, sure enough, one of them reported that the placenta was anterior.  So now I’m just waiting until things grow a bit more and hopefully the placenta moves out of the way.

I bought something else while I was home sick and it also arrived on Saturday.  It’s vinyl lettering for the nursery wall and it will go above the cot (I ordered a dark brown lettering to match the safari browns and greens I’ve got going on).  Cute, no?  :)