Sinking in...

Well, it's been a week since these two lines appeared, and I'm finally starting to believe that I really am pregnant.
I got my positive result quite early, so I'm not five weeks yet - not until Wednesday.
I am feeling pretty tired and queasy already (and I've gone right off coffee which is most unusual for me), but part of me is just trying to forget about it until we're a bit further down the line and I can actually find out something conclusive.
All being well, the baby should be arriving at the start of October (or maybe the middle/end of October if he/she is anything like Charlie - who was two weeks late!)
Having said that, I am so accustomed to having complicated pregnancies, that I'm not taking anything for granted.
Not one day.
First, I have to get through the first twelve weeks without having a miscarriage (as happened with Baby #1)
Then I have to get past a diagnosis of Meckel-Gruber syndrome (Baby #2 - our precious little Will) - probably between 12-15 weeks.
THEN we have to pass the hurdle of the anomaly scan (16-20 weeks) to see if Baby #4 - unlike Baby #2 AND Baby #3 (Charlie) - has managed to avoid HLHS... and anything else potentially lethal.
So, quite a few fences to jump before I break out the Mothercare catalogue.
I know that must sound very pessimistic, but it's not really - I'm just being realistic.
I have no doubt that 'crunch time' will be very scary, and we hope and pray that all will be well with this little one, but we have gone into this with our eyes wide open, and are pretty philosophical about it.
With my pregnancies with Will and Charlie, I was scanned every week or two from six or eight weeks. At the moment (although I may change my mind!) we don't think we want to be scanned so often, unless necessary. I'd rather have as few scans as possible until they can tell us something definitive, as it's very stressful hauling up to the hospital every five minutes, just in case some sign of bad news has appeared.
So for now, we're thinking of scans at eight weeks, 12 weeks and then 20 weeks. Obviously, whichever way things go, we'll be having multiple scans after 20 weeks, but up until then, I'd like to try and enjoy my pregnancy as much as I can.
Even if things aren't 'normal' I'd like to pretend for as long as possible.
I'm aware this might sound odd, and please believe me, I'm not in denial - I just have a very different approach to pregnancy than most women.
Even with a positive test, I don't ever let myself think 'When the baby comes...'
It's always 'If the baby survives...'
So I'm making a concerted effort this time round to ENJOY growing a baby.
I intend to enjoy every new milestone, every change, every bout of morning sickness, every kick, every inch my belly grows - every single thing - but in its own right.
I don't know how well I'll do, but that's the plan. :-)
I haven't told the doctors yet. I'll probably give it another two or three weeks and then give the foetal medicine team a shout. They'll need to invest in a wheelbarrow to transport my mountain of maternity notes!
For the record, I'm at 4wks 3days and Little One (LO from hereon in...) is somewhere between the size of a poppyseed and a sesame seed.
Amazing how someone so tiny is already leaving big footprints across my heart.

Sent from my iPhone

Yikes.

I'm pregnant.

:-)

Here we go again.

Welcome to Charlie Barley's Baby.
At the moment, this blog is private - nobody can read it except me. We have a lot coming up over the next few months, and I need to get my head around it all on my own before I let everyone else in.
But I'm used to blogging on a public blog (Charlie's News) so I guess I'll just write like I'm talking to my usual gang of readers. And I figure you'll all be reading this eventually anyway.
So.
Here we go.
Most of you will know that Charlie had his Fontan surgery last March, and has recovered brilliantly. For the first time ever, we don't have major surgery looming over us.
We always said that we'd think about another child after Charlie had his op - but his op kept being bumped further and further back because he was doing so well.
Even so, we decided not to think about more kids until his surgery was over, because we wanted to be able to focus on him 100 percent. Not to mention the fact that we live a very long way from the hospital that does his surgery, and the idea of juggling a sick Charlie as well as a baby/toddler was pretty scary.
We never envisaged he'd be seven years old before he was home and safely recovered from his Fontan.
But here we are.
I'm 35 now, so although I'm not ancient by any means, I'm certainly no spring chicken in terms of baby-making. So the clock is ticking (albeit still quite quietly.)
I wrote a diary throughout my pregnancy with Charlie, and I really wish I'd discovered blogging back then - it's so much easier to document everything on a blog, with all the pictures, links and other gadgets available. And now I have an iPhone it's even easier to snatch five minutes to write down all the stuff I'll forget otherwise. So here I am.
Anyway. Where are we at right now?
Well. I'm not pregnant - as far as I know. I spoke to the geneticist at our local hospital a few months ago, and she confirmed that there are still no scientific advances we could take advantage of to improve our odds of conceiving a child without HLHS or MGS. The only thing she could recommend was for me to take massive doses of folic acid for three months before trying to conceive (5mg per day instead of the normally recommended 0.4mg) and to call her once I am pregnant.
Ok.
I'm not going to lie. This is scary. Very scary. I swing from hopeful optimism, to blind terror, to slapping myself around the head thinking I must be absolutely mad to put myself through this.
But it doesn't really feel like there's much of a choice. I'm just not 'done' with having kids yet. I'm not ready to call it a day. And nor is Pete.
We want another baby.
Charlie wants a brother or sister that he actually gets to meet.
He knows what could happen - that we might get another baby like Will who would only be able to stay for a very little while; or that we might get a baby with a special heart like his who would need lots of operations. Or we might get one that is just plain old ordinary.
We have weighed up all the odds, countless times - for the record, we have about a 65-70% chance of a child who is perfectly fine - and have come to the conclusion that we'd prefer to take the risk and accept whatever outcome we get, rather than not give it a whirl and then hit our fifties and spend the rest of our lives wondering 'what if?'
So, I'm into my last few folic acid tablets from my initial three-month prescription, so I guess we'll just have to wait and see what happens next.
Watch this space...