5 weeks 2 days and a snap shot

This time last week was great. Flo and I had just had it confirmed that we were officially pregnant, which was absolutely fantastic news. But the icing on the cake was seeing Flo so happy and literally glowing... walking around with her head in the clouds and a permanent smile on her face.

As the week went on however, the width of the smile decreased and her shoulders began to droop with worry, as she slowly tried to convince herself that it wasn't working and that she wasn't feeling any symptoms. Of course, while Flo was getting concerned about not feeling any symptoms, I could see plenty.

For a start she's been much more tired than normal, heading off to bed no later than 10 o'clock each night where before it was a challenge to get to bed before 11 o'clock. Then there's eating... suddenly she's gone completely off certain foods and last night I found a bucket next to the bed which had been placed there "just in case".

Then there's the forgetfulness. Like stopping half way through a sentence and forgetting what she was going to say. But then there's also the other extreme... managing to string out a 30 second story into five minutes, usually when I'm stood naked in the bathroom about to leave to put some clothes on while she's still in the shower.

Oh yes, then there's the bouts of deafness. I don't know what's going on with her hearing, but sometimes recently I'm having to shout at her before she can hear what I'm saying.

So today I was doubly relieved. This afternoon we returned to the hospital for a five week ultrasound scan and blood test. The blood test yielded a HCG of 4024 (apparently that's good) and as you can see from the picture below, there's definitely something growing inside Flo's tummy!


If you look just to the right of center you can see an oval shape, which is a sack that has formed around the embryo. Inside this sack is a tiny little embryo... it's currently 3 mm long, so smaller than a grain of rice. So that was absolutely fantastic news and straight away there was a huge weight lifted from certainly my shoulders and judging from the big smile that suddenly re-appeared on Flo's face from hers too!

There was some sad news too. We also spotted what appeared to be a very small second embryo. It appears that this second one took (so was certainly transferred successfully) but that it subsequently stopped growing. For a couple of seconds this upset me a little, since the idea of twins had really grown on me. However, in those two seconds I suddenly became aware of the fact that this was very selfish of me, since the risks to Flo are much greater with twins and the fact that there's even one growing inside her is pretty miraculous!

The second relief of the day was that, for a few days at least, Flo can relax and not worry about whether she's pregnant or not, which means smiles and good moods... I like seeing her happy and she positively glows at the moment. But it's two weeks to the next "check-point"...

So, the plan is to be happy for the next week, not to worry and to assume that everything is going to plan. Leave all the worrying to next week and deal with it then.