The Longest Day

I woke up on Thanksgiving day, eager to fulfill a family tradition: Watching NBC’s coverage of the Macy’s parade. As I turned to get out of bed, I felt a sharp pain in my left side, rather like a pulled muscle. I made it to the couch to watch the floats but the pain wasn’t going away and all I could think of was that my pregnancy was ectopic and that I’d never be able to celebrate Thanksgiving again.

By the time I called the  doctor, they said to give it the day and come in on Friday morning for an ultrasound. I cooked while Hubby took care of everything else and we had our Thanksgiving day feast although there was a bit of a somber pall over it.

We went in on Friday and found out that it was not an ectopic pregnancy but a huge cyst that was causing my pain. The doctor explained that sometimes these can twist on their own and then untwist which is where the pain comes in. She said that what I needed to be careful of was having the cyst rupture in which case I’d feel (according to her) the worst pain I ever felt.  Oh joy!

Then she asked one of those questions that you might not want to hear from your doctor: “So, how many do you think you’re carrying?”.  “Um….well, we were hoping for one,” I stammered. She said that she suspected either twins or triplets. I was floored. We floated out of the office in shock. And I was giddy with this all weekend. Although terrified of the idea of multiples, Hubby surprisingly wasn’t and that made me think that maybe it wouldn’t be such a bad thing after all.  And having multiple embryos made me think that the chance of having one healthy one was increased.

It was 6w1d and she couldn’t see heartbeats though so she told me to come back as scheduled on Monday.

Today.

So in we went. On a miserable, grey morning.  There are places where I love rain.  New York isn’t one of them. When we got to the office, the building door was inexplicably locked. The doctor, who was probably driving in from someplace lush, was seriously delayed. We waited and waited and I tried not to take all of this as a bad sign.

This time the wand went in and the doctor pretty much ignored the cyst and went right for the uterus. He is skeptical that there is more than one (certainly if there is the 2nd and/or 3rd are smaller than they should be). And while the one is growing appropriately, he still couldn’t see a heartbeat at 6w4d.

He gives this pregnancy less than 50% chance of viability. We go back next Wednesday but he’s already told me to think about D&C versus natural miscarriage, recommending the D&C as I need to fly to California on the 9th.
What a difference a few days make.

How do we get through this week?