The past and the future collide

I find myself wondering what would have been had my previous pg not ended in mc as April 15th—what what would have been my due date—draws near. I’d be getting ready to possibly go into labor and deliver soon. Don’t get me wrong, I am so incredibly grateful for my current pg but the pain of the child that I lost previously still has the power to shake my soul to its core. When I find myself beginning to dwell on the coming ‘anniversary,’ I change gears mentally and try to think happy thoughts (like say, of who should be the next Idol cast off and—yippee—new episodes of Desperate Housewives—nothing like TV to distract me). But I wonder how I’ll handle the coming day, and what it may hold for me emotionally. The sore is still there, the scab slightly healed over, but one big brush against it and all could be lost, the scar perhaps bigger…or maybe it will continue to heal and shrink, yet never go away. It will be a part of me forever.

Of course, the one BIG thing that manages to get me into happy thoughts again when I start to bring myself down, is the thought of the dancer currently growing in my uterus. Like her parents, she still has no rhythm and I’m not complaining. Today I had a visit to the perinatalogist and all was good. My blood sugars are under control, no glucose or protein in my urine, my BP was 116/72, and my fundal height measured only a few days ahead of my actual gestational term. So all continues in a good vein.

The one thing that made me stop and take pause was my doctor’s questioning today as to whether or not she has me on a high enough dose of dexamethasone. See, too low a dose and my dancer stands to become virilized (i.e., develop a larger-than-normal clitoris and/or labia, which sometimes can require surgery to correct). Hmmm, now call me crazy, but I myself wondered whether I was on a high enough dose of the dex after reading a research article that said a pregnant woman with CAH needs to be on 0.02 mg of dex per kilo of weight. Which means that I started this pg out slightly under-dosed and now, given my pg weight gain, I should be on a dose currently double what I’m on. But I figured, she's the specialist with a real degree )while mine only came from the google school of medicine) so she knows what she's doing. The kicker in this, however, is that by now (26 weeks along), the baby’s sexual organs have formed…so wouldn’t increasing my dose be a case of too little too late? Or—in light of this lateness—a case of the doctor covering her ass? Tomorrow I go to the lab first thing in the a.m. for a fasting blood draw to measure my testosterone, 17 hydroxyprogesterones (free and total) and DHEAS levels to see if the dex has my levels suppressed enough (which = baby’s levels being suppressed enough). Hrumph…we’ll see.

But, in the meantime, the past and the future will collide on April 15th. On one hand, I’m so incredibly overjoyed by the little girl who is now part of my life. Each day that passes brings me one step closer to the reality that she—a real live baby—may be coming home with us in late June/early July (crossing all crossables, knocking on wood, and making pagan sacrifices in her name—okay, just kidding about that last one). Yet, I lament that she will never know the little boy who came before her, who was lost, and exists only in the memories of both A and I—and it breaks my heart all over again.