And no, I’m not talking about my cheery outlook on life.
Monday’s appointment (which was originally for a 1 hr glucose test to do an early check on me for gestational diabetes due to the steriods, and my normal 16 week check up) was useless when it came to learning anything about our baby having a possible neural tube defect. My OB was so sure that a re-test of the AFP was going to return negative results because she felt I was on the “early side” to have the AFP blood draw at 15 weeks 4 days- which supposedly increases your chances of a positive screen -so she pretty much poo-pooed every single one of my concerns and sent us on our way to wait for the results before discussing anything.
Fast forward 5 days and guess what? Yep I’m STILL screening positive for a baby with a neural tube defect and this time she did seem concerned, and apologized for being so certain the screen would be negative. But there is still nothing she can do (this office isn’t equipped to do L2’s so she cant scan us to give us some reassurance, all they can do is basic level scans ship us to boston for the big ones) which she would suggest to do at 18 weeks as that is the earliest you can get a good look at the babies structures-which would be this coming Thursday. So she offered to call boston and get my L2 moved up for us and then i reminded her that I had already scheduled my L2 for the earliest possible date-and that I would be there at 18.1 weeks which is this friday. She did say she felt that if we do have a NTD that it most likely will be on the smaller side, and since our L2 is early he might not be big enough to definitively rule out a NTD on Friday so I should mentally prepare for the very real possibility that we might have to have a repeat L2 between 20-24 weeks, when the baby is big enough, to finally know for sure if he has a NTD or if its my placenta that’s the culprit. If Friday’s scan turns out to not be able to give us a good look at the baby and the placenta, I will be heading down to NYC to meet with a perinatologist who specializes in fetal placentas and sonography for the repeat L2 and hopefully some fucking answers because I’m about fed up at this point.
And because that can’t be enough shit to deal with (on top of the mental baggage I have to carry around due to my history)-I also tested positive for gestational diabetes. In fact, my blood sugar level was so high, I don’t even have to do the 3 hour glucose tolerance test, I get to skip right over that fun and go direct to finger sticking and monitoring my food intake for however many more weeks I am pregnant.
I can’t even put into words how ridiculous all of this is because I have never been less sure that this is our take home baby than right now-and even though I haven’t purchased a single article of clothing or nursery thing yet, I stupidly gave a 6 week notice at work 2 weeks ago (between motion sickness, second trimester all day long sickness and not having done ANYTHING in this house to prepare for a baby we decided it was best for me to give up the job and the commute while I still had some time before I would be too pregnant to do anything) and of course purchased a mom vehicle that I didn’t really need unless I was going to have a baby (while I was still employed so that I could get financing).
So here I sit with the potential that I might lose this baby too and soon to be jobless with a new car payment for a vehicle that can constantly remind me I’m not a mom.
I think I should have just bought that damn onesie instead.