An introduction
Hello fellow August mamas -
This is my first post to this thread, so I'll jump in. I'm a single mom by choice, age 50 (51 in April!), hyper-high-tech pregnancy natch. I'm 15 weeks along and finally over the most brutal tummyaches I've ever experienced. Not nausea, more like heartburn but right smack dab in the middle of the abdomen. (Possibly due to the supplemental progesterone I took for the first 12 weeks.) This plus aversions, insomnia, fatigue -- yuk! I am so glad to be through with the first trimester.
I am cautiously optimistic -- or is is optimistically cautious. This is my second pregnancy; my first (also hyper-high-tech) was two years ago and ended at 25 weeks from a very low-tech, NON-age-related pathogen by the name of group B strep. My little son James lived for 24 hours, in my arms. That is a pain I would not wish upon another human being. Those of you who have been there know.
I spent most of the following year trying all sorts of ways to bring another child into my life, including a very long and hard effort at adopting internationally. Red tape, bureacratic delays, random nonsense, and an intransigent homestudy agency that kept making the same sloppy errors in my homestudy, over and over, made me so frustrated that I decided to try the fertility route again.
Sure enough, just like my first time through, I became pregnant easily using the right technology. And so here I am.
Now over the first-trimester miseries I am beginning to feel wonderful. My two prenatals so far have been perfect. My practitioner is a perinatologist who is said to be very hip and accepting of the midwife model. (I started out with a perinatologist/midwife team, but the powers that be nixed that. Being 50, I might as well wear a scarlet letter 'high risk' on my breast -- even with a peri on my team evidently the midwives aren't allowed to go near me.) A partner peri of my doc, who is an infectious-disease specialist, has a protocol planned for me that will effectively eliminate the risk of another group B strep disaster. And of course, I will hire a doula and am hoping very much for a waterbirth or water labor at least.
So ideally the bases are as covered as they can be at this point.
My due date is August 16, which happens to be my mother's birthday and that of my peri as well. So far I haven't gained an ounce ... but I do have the beginnings of a little tummy. Enough such that I have started to use the private shower at the gym where I swim daily. At my age, I won't be assumed pregnant by fellow bathers but merely just letting-myself-go ("That woman needs to do some sit-ups in a hurry!" I imagine them thinking). Anyway, that's my little ego thing. I think when I am big enough to where it's clear what's going on, then I'll return to the big shower, Proud, 50 (uh, I mean, 51 by then), and more than a little PG ...
Glad to be among you folks - Martha
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