Photo by Fallon Michael on Unsplash
As I write this, I am 20 weeks pregnant with our second child. This pregnancy was not 100% planned. I was ready to have a second child earlier this year, but Mr. LL wanted to get some of the bigger home renovations done this year, before an infant was in the house, and so we had agreed to wait. Then I had issues renewing my birth control because my OB/GYN was on maternity leave and well, you see where this ended up..
So being pregnant during a global pandemic has not been ideal and has added some extra anxiety and stress to the whole ordeal. I’ve definitely felt more depressed this pregnancy and generally apprehensive and worried over the whole affair.
A few things are different this time around and not because of the pandemic.
I’m 35 years old this time. What does that matter you may ask? Well 35 is when they begin to call your pregnancy “geriatric”. That’s right. I’m 35 and considered f***ing geriatric by birthin’ standards. This means I’m “high risk” for things like genetic defects in the fetus, low birth weight, premature birth, other complications, etc.
I’m heavier this time. Hey, my body doesn’t bounce back like it once did and at the start of this pregnancy I was probably at my heaviest if not close, so that is also a tally against me in the “high risk” column for this pregnancy.
So with these two factors, when I took my NIPT (Non-Invasive Prenatal Test - which is just blood work) and it came back as “unable to run” because there wasn’t enough fetal DNA in my blood stream it made me worry.
I took the NIPT again and failed it again for the same reason. Now I started to panic.
Basically, at this point, I had one option for any kind of prenatal screenings and that was to have an amniocentesis done. Scary as that was, to me at least, in-and-of-itself there was the added stressor that Mr. LL would not be allowed to go with me to hold my hand. Yeah, during this pandemic, no one but momma is allowed at any and all doctor’s appointments.
I didn’t have to take the test but my doctor encouraged it since I have the “high risk” markers and no results can be a red flag that something is wrong (tbf, she also said it could be nothing). So, being the always-wants-to-be-prepared person that I am, I opted to have it done. If I needed to plan to raise and support a child with special needs and this test could tell me about it then I would like to know.
What is amniocentesis? Well, it’s when they take a very big needle and stick it in your stomach all the way down into your uterus and get a sample from the amniotic fluid around the baby. It really, REALLY, REALLY f***ing hurts. They had to do it twice on me, because the first needle WASN’T BIG ENOUGH. It took me a full four days to recover from it. The area where it happened felt tender and sore so I just rested. But I mean, I survived. Sure I cried the whole time, was terrified and in pain but it is what it is. Not everyone has as bad an experience as I did (I hope).
Then you wait for at least two weeks to get your results. I had an appointment my regular doctor exactly two weeks from the date of the amnio and they got the results while I was waiting in the exam room. Those two weeks were stressful and I worried about my unborn baby the entire time. The week of my doctor’s appointment I was a mental void. My brain basically shut down because I think I would have just worried and stressed the whole time if it hadn’t.
So what did the results say? I have a perfectly healthy baby (gender being withheld) growing inside of me. Thank The Goddess.
