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| … and baby makes three |
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 Missed the first month? What about the second month? Read all about it. |
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First Trimester, Third Month |by jerri andreasen
Liz's breasts have begun to get bigger. Not that she was small to start with, but now they're getting bigger, fuller, and more tender. While it's great to watch, the look-but-don't-touch policy is frustrating for me. I keep offering to massage them for her, but she gives me her "You can't fool me, I know what you really want" look. She's also getting queasy, particularly in the mornings. Sometimes she gets up feeling fine and starts to get dressed. A few minutes later I'll come back into the bedroom and find her lying on the bed moaning, pants pulled up to mid-thigh. When it happens she needs to rest there on the bed for about ten minutes before she can get up and start again. And she's tired. Liz has always been a bundle of energy, but in the last few weeks she started going to bed at 9:30 at night, then by 9:00. Now in her tenth week of pregnancy, she's in bed by 8:30 at night and snoozing in the car on the way to work as well. She has also gone through several bra sizes (we had to buy the last couple from the "full-figured" section of the department store). Morning sickness is lasting almost all day, but she hasn't actually thrown up. We buy a large bottle of Tums. At some point we actually had sex! Liz had been too sore/sick/tired, so nothing was happening in that department. I really didn't expect anything to happen until the magical second trimester, also called the honeymoon of the pregnancy, after the characteristic nausea of the first trimester diminishes, and before the aches and pains of the third trimester. But one morning, as I'm waking up, Liz rolls over and practically attacks me. Wow! That was new for us. Liz's good buddy Kathryn comes to visit us the last week of August. Liz takes some time off of work, and they go shopping. They stumble on this terrific little maternity shop called A Pea in a Pod in Seattle's Westlake Center, and the manager is incredibly friendly and helpful. Liz's breasts are still growing in leaps and bounds and she needs a better bra. The manager finds her a new bra (size 40 DD!) that fits and feels fabulous. Liz has also been wearing some maternity underwear given her by a friend who'd been pregnant. Lovely stuff. It looks like the kind of underwear your grandmother would wear. But the elastic goes up over Liz's stomach, so it feels better. Kathryn's visit coincides with our next doctor appointment. We're seeing her again, even though we're still not entirely happy with her. We had some problems with their billing department, and there was an incident where we had difficulty getting hold of the doctor when Liz was having a problem with her asthma. Despite the staff telling us to call with any question, no matter how dumb we thought it was, we couldn't get the doctor on the phone and weren't allowed to talk to any of the other doctors or nurse practitioners at the clinic. We finally called after hours, hoping to get the doctor on call, and our own doctor (who, it turned out, was the doctor on call that night) called us back within five minutes. We decided to just call after hours with any questions from then on. Kathryn went in to the appointment with us. The doctor was very good with asking and answering questions, assuring Liz that it was appropriate for her queasiness and exhaustion to be tapering off. She said that within a few weeks, Liz would be calling her, worrying because she felt too good. She said that even though she always told her patients it would happen, many would call anyway, concerned that they weren't pregnant anymore. We giggled. We wouldn't do that, of course. "Well," the doctor asked, "want to hear the heartbeat?" Yeah! The doctor pulled out this small box about the size of a lunchbox. It actually looked like a geiger counter. It turned out that we weren't going to have an ultrasound this time. She was just going to use this microphone/amplifier thing to hear the heartbeat. If I'd known that, I would have brought a tape recorder to tape the heartbeat to share with all of you. The doctor spread some goop on Liz's stomach, put the microphone against her tummy, and started searching for the baby's heartbeat. We heard a heartbeat, but the doctor assured us it was Liz's. After searching for a minute or so, she said, "Don't worry, if we don't hear it, we'll do another ultrasound. We won't let you go home today not knowing that your baby is okay." I was getting excited at the prospect of getting another ultrasound photo when Liz reminded the doctor that her cervix was tilted over to the right. The doctor said, "Oh, that's right," readjusted the microphone, and we heard a very loud, distinct heartbeat. "There it is," she said. It was much faster than Liz's was — over twice as fast. It was an undulating whooshing sound, sort of like something you'd hear in an old submarine movie. I choked up again, and had to wipe the tears from my eyes with the back of my hand. I don't cry easily, but I've been doing a lot of it the past twelve weeks. I suspect I'll be doing a lot more of it in the next 28 weeks, too. The doctor said we should make our next appointment or two before we left. She said that at the appointment between 18 and 20 weeks, they'll send us to the Nuclear Medicine lab for a special ultrasound where they look at the lungs and heart and other internal organs. And for a small fee, they'll give us a videotape of it. We began to salivate and realized that, despite our concerns, our doctor is seducing us with technology. We've postponed looking for another doctor until we get our tape. We are, however, touring birthing centers. If we discover one that we like a lot, we'll go with it, switching doctors to use it if necessary (though we may not have to — one of the birthing centers that interest us is the one in the hospital that our doctor's clinic is associated with). We'll keep you updated. Another recent development is that Liz's father is sick with cancer. The onset was pretty sudden, and at first we were hoping that he would live long enough to see the baby, which is due in March. That seems to be out of the question now, though. Liz just got back from visiting him in California this past weekend, and it looks like he won't last to the end of September. This is particularly hard on her because her relationship with him was strained for quite a few years after she came out to him. But we coaxed him to our wedding, making sure to give him a stiff drink when he walked in the door, and he's come around nicely. He always has a kiss and hug for me, and quizzes me on computer topics, since he's breaking into the world of computing. I suppose there's a lesson in here somewhere — something about not wasting time with your children — but I'm not sure I have the fortitude to figure it out right now. So here we are. It's September 15, 1998. Liz's 14th week of pregnancy. Perhaps her father's last week on earth. The cusp of life and death. Can the cycle be made any clearer? But we'll go on. Like the blinding flash of realization when I finally got that we were pregnant, I know we're on a path from which we can't turn. We'll move forward. We won't be any wiser or any more prepared, but we'll be alright. 
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