It all began in March of 2006. I woke up at 2am one evening in excruciating pain. I called out to my husband from the bathroom..."I am dying in here...help!" The pain subsided after 30 minutes or so. I went back to bed. The next morning, 2am came and so did the same pain. I was up again. I was passing out, sweating, the whole works. It too went away after 30 or 40 minutes. Night three...2am came...nothing. "Whew!" I thought to myself and went back to sleep. Then at 2:30am...here it is again. This time my husband took me to the ER. I couldn't take it anymore. I had already had my appendix out several years ago, so it couldn't be that, but what could be causing this? It felt just like my appendicitis. Maybe they didn't really remove it years ago. Maybe they just spiffed it up a bit and sewed me back up. It could be possible, but probably wasn't the case. After hours at the hospital, blood work, the whole gammit (and some pain meds) the doctor came in. He told me that he thought I had a bad ovarian cyst and that I was also pregnant. Wow, a cyst I thought? That is a lot of pain coming from my ovary. Wait, what??? Pregnant. I was actually preggers. We hadn't been "trying" with the whole cycle calculator and all, but we both hoping for a baby. Our hopes had turned into reality.
This was our first pregnancy, so I didn't know what to expect, or how I would feel. I was a little disappointed that I didn't get to pee on the stick and wait to watch it change colors...but we were very excited about having our first child. We had a few more tests and ultrasounds to confirm and were told we were already about six weeks along. Our due date was November 23, 2006.
Each week would come and go. I kept Cheez-Its by my bedside and would grab a few during the night and first thing in the morning before I even got out of bed. I signed up for prenatal yoga, which was wonderful, and felt great. My biggest concerns were that our due date was November 23...that was Thanksgiving Day! And also, as a cellist and the manager of our orchestra, when would our Fall concert be? We usually have it right before Thanksgiving, but I would be really pregnant and as the principal cellist I need to be 100%. Our answer...schedule the orchestra concert in October and have Thanksgiving the weekend before. I wasn't going to miss the concert or my turkey and stuffing!
As Spring turned to Summer, we bought our first home and moved from our apartment. We were all doing great. As my belly grew we knew it would be time to find out if we were having a boy or a girl. Ultrasound day came with great excitement...and we found out we were having a GIRL! What would we call her? Will she have a pink room? Will she even like pink? Maybe we should go neutral with the colors? No, pink it will be, and I will throw in a splash of green. The green would help her Daddy feel a little more masculine.
As we went for more routine ultrasounds the doctors noticed her ventricles in her brain were enlarged. This came as a shock to us. What did this even mean? They ran more tests. The enlargement wasn't big enough to be consider hydrocephalus, but it was something irregular that needed to be monitored. We visited the prenatal specialist on a bi-monthly basis. They were concerned about the possibility of down syndrome and other genetic problems. We had them run a few blood tests, but chose not to have an amnio. The down's test came back negative, which was great news, but we didn't know what was causing the enlargement. We went to bed every night and hoped for the best.
As the pregnancy progressed even further, her ventricles stayed a little large, but consistent. We would keep an eye on them each month. The doctors felt she was stable and we had nothing to worry about. We were so relieved...whew. What a weight lifted off us. With the stress lessening...we could focus on the fun stuff, like painting, picking out furniture and filling her closet with little girl clothes!
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