Diary of my Pregnancy - 40 year old first timer

Five weeks four days:


So far so good. Still no AF after my BFP and am 28 DPO. Confused? I was too.

These are all terms bandied about on the Baby Central forums where I was advised to join and lurk. What you do is give your estimated date of delivery (in my case determined by my first day of last menstrual period) and it puts you in a group of women who will deliver that week. Or so I thought...

What I found were a lot of women talking about daily temperatures, OPKs, and all sorts of terminology I knew of as fertility issues, not pregnancy issues. Lots of people would have headlines like, "Now on to August :(" or "I got my AF, on to August." Or worse, talk about their BFNs.

This also confused me. Not just the abbreviations which I will get to in a moment, but because there were non-pregnant women on a pregnancy forum.

I'm well aware of the difficulties of getting pregnant. I've lived through it with friends and with my sibling who has tried everything, unsuccessfully, to make me an aunt. I know the heart-wrenching experience women have when they get implanted and hope it will stick. All the meds they have to take for optimum fertility. It is unimaginably difficult.

That is why I chose to go the fate route and avoid all fertility issues completely. I never got fertility testing (at age 40!). I never took a hormone in my entire life. I also made sure that I never focused too hard on the idea of having a baby. Yes, I've wanted a baby of my own, but I have two amazing kids through marriage (full-time since my husband is a widower) and could go on just fine with only them.

And yes, I had a feeling I was probably fertile (from a making eggs perspective) as I have a regular 27/28 day cycle. Are there abnormalities in the eggs? Who knows. I try to avoid the X-ray tech as much as possible, but I work in a hospital. I travel in airplanes. I'm exposed more frequently than most ordinary people. I could have some damage there.

I'm also a realist. I know I'm 40. I know I had a small likelihood of getting pregnant naturally, and that I have a large likelihood of miscarriage (especially from genetic issues). Our eggs are vulnerable to damage throughout our lives, so I know that by 40, my odds are low. Then again, I found the man of my dreams (literally...a long wonderful story) at age 38, so I know that fate works and can work in my favor.

BTW, here's why eggs are so vulnerable: At birth you are born with all the eggs you'll ever have. Actually, the baby I'm carrying now will soon create all the eggs (if a girl) she will every have in her life. Those eggs are not fully developed. They are stuck in First Prophase until ovulation which then triggers the rest of Meiosis I to complete.

Which basically means (for those who don't remember high school biology) that in the process of creating eggs through Meiosis, the eggs are stuck about halfway through the process. Fertilization triggers the finalization of the process to proceed and complete Meiosis II. So environmental reasons can mess with the proper division of genes/chromosomes/etc...

Men, on the other hand, produce new sperm constantly. Each is fully Meiosis-ized (term made up by me). So the sperm don't sit around getting pummeled by radiation or toxins of any kind for a length of time. They are born, they die, new ones are born and die. If they are malformed, they are too weak to survive the journey to the egg and die.

They don't get stuck halfway through creation for 30ish years like eggs. Men make gazillions of sperm through their lifetime. Women make 400 eggs (estimated) over her fertile lifetime. Doesn't seem fair, but at least they have to suffer through their prostate in their older years--which women thankfully don't have.

So back to the forum, it makes me sad to see all these women are so desperate to have a child that they join the forum for where they hope they will be pregnant, long before they are actually pregnant. The disappointment, IMO, seems to be compounded by the fact that they are doing this month after month.

The abbreviations? Well, AF stands for period. Huh? I wondered that too. AF is slang for "Aunt Flo" for whatever reason. I keep picturing this big heavy woman "Aunt Flo" bleeding. Not a pleasant bit of imagery. Seems like P for period would make much more sense. But alas, AF is what they use on the boards. Learn to love it. Or not.

And it is ubiquitous on the baby boards. BFP stands for "Big Fat Positive or I've seen "Big F---ing Positive" for the pregnancy tests (likewise BFN is Big Fat Negative). DPO is days post ovulation (that one makes sense). And OPK is ovulation predictor kit. Here's a list of all the terms commonly found.

Next article, I should be caught up with my blogging in real time baby time. And I will talk about all the apps I'm using to track my baby's progress.

Diary of my Pregnancy - 40 year old first timer

4 weeks 2 days

So now I'm pregnant. I know, there should be an exclamation point. On baby central they use the term BFP (Big F---ing Positive). Clearly it is a big deal. But it is hard to be excited when I know the realities.

Everyone I know miscarried the first time. I'm only 4wks pregnant. Just a blob at that point. I'm 40. So much can still go wrong. I am more likely to miscarry than not. So it is hard to get overjoyed. I'm usually an optimist, and those of you reading this would think I am a complete buzz kill. However, I don't want to start naming the baby before I have even gotten past the point where I can see my baby on ultrasound.

I did make an appointment for that. Nearly 3 weeks from now. A long time to wait. Every day I go to the bathroom and half expect to see my period. So far so good.

My husband is like me, and has had similar feelings. He's been to 18weeks and then miscarried, so he knows what it is like to get really into it and have it all go wrong. That being said, we wonder aloud what our child will look like (will have a VERY thick head of hair), what they will act like (probably like his daughter who is remarkably similar to me...only moreso), what the name could be (already picked out for a girl, no clue what it would be for a boy)...

How am I feeling? Honestly, early stages of pregnancy are remarkably like PMS. Sore breasts, a little weepy, and a little crampy. I think the dull aches are from the implantation process of the baby into the uterus. The parasite (i.e. miracle child) is boring a hole into my uterus. Makes sense that would hurt a little.

While we are mostly keeping this under wraps, there are a few select people who know. Mostly because I need an outlet to talk about it or I will go insane.

(Note the posting is not completely contemporaneous with my actual dates at this point because I started the blog a week after all of this is taking place...so there will be a few posts this week as I catch up and will eventually have a weekly posting to reflect the actual time frame.)

Diary of my Pregnancy - 40 year old first timer

So I'm creating a pregnancy diary. It has been recommended I do this on multiple baby websites, so why not do it on a blog? Exactly. Which brings me to...

In brief, I got married last year, to a widower with two children. He went through all the fertility issues with his first wife, without much success, and a lot of heartbreak. His first child is adopted, and his second is via a surrogate. I did not want to put him through that again. However, as it stated in the title, I'm 40 years old now. I knew my odds were not good. Actually, the natural way, my odds were 5%/month likelihood of getting pregnant naturally.

Another way of stating this is a 1 in 20 month shot of trying versus succeeding. Since we only started trying 5 months ago, we are actually way ahead of the curve in that sense.

How did I find out? I was not obsessive about the process. I did buy a pack of three pregnancy tests last May when we started trying.

I found out because my iperiod iPhone app, where I diligently enter in my first day of menstrual cycle, tracks my fertility periods and when my expected periods are.

As an MD, you'd think I'd be able to remember when my LMP was each month, but no. I never can get that straight. My patients always seem to know, which is a marvel to me. They don't know what medicines they take, or what medical problems they have, whether they got vaccines, or even what the previous doctor said to them. But they always know their last menstrual period.

So I use an app, because apple says, "There's an app for that." And there is. Free too.

I was headed to work and checked my phone and my iperiod app announced "Your period is 1 day late!" And I have never in my life been late. I've been early--always ranging between 25-28 day/month cycles. Lately I'm nearly 27-28 day/month cycles. Something about getting married has made me more regular (and more fertile perhaps?).

I called my husband and let him know (we discuss everything) and he said "Hmmm" and I said "Hmmm" and we were like, we'll see what happens during my shift. Perhaps something will show up during my shift.

Something did show up--a dizzy spell. Very brief, and related to sympathetic pain of a severe bone injury. I sat down, drank some juice, and was fine afterwards. I used to get episodes like this frequently in med school and residency as the shock of something painful would cause a brief drop in my already low blood pressure (a known phenomenon called orthostatic hypotension from a vasovagal event). [It is such a soap opera cliche that no matter how old, the female who passes out is diagnosed as being pregnant]

Since I hadn't had something like this in a decade, and I know that blood pressure drops in pregnancy, I went "Hmmm" to myself.

And then I went home after my shift, opened up the second of three pregnancy tests and immediately got a deep pink line. Just one. So, no pregnancy, right? Oh wait, you are supposed check after 3 full minutes, not 30 seconds [bad doctor!]. So I watched a little longer and a faint line appeared to the right. And it got darker and darker. So I am pregnant! For real.

To be continued...