Monday, May 17, 2010

happy birthday to me

It's not such a great week so far - I came down with a yucky cold over the weekend and called in sick today. But things are picking up. I'm feeling better and hey yippee it's my birthday tomorrow! Not just any birthday, either - it's the big 4-0!

We have no particular plans. Mr. Foxy was out shopping today, so I guess there is a gift in my future. For mother's day he got me a cute pair of sensible Scandinavian shoes, which I promptly exchanged for some metallic pumps and fake snakeskin slides. I have plenty of sensible shoes.. a girl needs something sassy to go with a nice summer dress, no?

So now that everyone at work is starting to notice that I'm pregnant, I don't think I'll be able to help myself from saying "Yes I am.. and I'm 40 years old! How do you like that!" Yep, it feels pretty great. And I keep remembering the news stories, back when I was a teenager, about women having babies over 30 and what are the health risks, and what is this world coming to!? Well that was the 1980's.. by the time I got married at the age of 32, those concerns were just a distant memory.

Okay, there is one age-related pregnancy issue that's been buzzing around in the back of my head for a few weeks now. When my OB suggested that I might consider a VBAC delivery (vaginal birth after cesarean) and I ruled it out with hardly a thought. After the heroic effort we went through to get pregnant, I simply want to take the quick, easy, and painless route. And I'm really not interested in a prolonged labor, only to find out (36 hours later?!) that I'm not progressing and end up needing a c-section anyways.

So I made the decision to do c/s again, but part of me still felt like I was wussing out. I kindof had it stuck in my head that older moms are more likely to have labor complications, but is this really true? Maybe I was just rationalizing to justify my own wimpiness.

Well, my dears, Dr. Google has come to my defense! I looked it up.. apparently it has been shown that the chance of successful vaginal delivery decreases big-time after the age of 40. Overall there is a 20-40% failure rate for VBACs, but for chicks over 40 the risk of failure is more than doubled. This is enough of a problem that most of the guidelines for identifying a "good" or "bad" candidate specifically say that being over 40 is a poor indicator. Basically, you'd have to be highly motivated to even consider trying, knowing that you're more than 50% likely to fail. And how motivated am I? Not at all! So forget it, people, I am a bad candidate!

So I'll be whooping it up on my birthday tomorrow. Looking forward to our big Level 2 ultrasound on Friday. We definitely intend to find out whether Lil' Scrappy is a boy or girl. Stay tuned!

Wednesday, May 5, 2010

a little pre-mother's day rant

Time for a little back story. I mentioned back in October that my brother got married to a delightful girl, let's call her Peaches. After a crappy year of IF treatment, I was kindof dreading the prospect of them getting pregnant right away, while we slog away with various FETs and maybe another IVF cycle. Well, the great news is that we both got pregnant at practically the same time! Peaches sat with Waffle Girl the day of our FET and was kind enough to not mention the fact that she'd already had a positive POAS. When I called to tell her about our beta results, she spilled the news. I was only jealous for a split-second that it was so easy for her. My overriding feeling is excitement about my future child having a cousin the same age (maybe even the same birthday) who lives just a mile away.

So who decides to rain on my parade? My mom. I saw her the other day and she says to me, "How come you're bigger than Peaches?", gazing at my belly. WTF?! I just laughed it off and said, "Well, you mother of 2, you should know that you pop out sooner with the 2nd baby because your abs have already been shot to hell." Then a few minutes later.. "And another thing .. she's a few inches taller than me - taller women don't show as much!" Several hours later, mom is long gone and I blurt out to Mr. Foxy, "Hey! I was on hormone shots and patches that made me to gain extra weight in the first few weeks. Poor Peaches had such bad morning sickness that she was losing weight for a while there." So, yes I have a baby bump.. and it's adorable! And it's well deserved! So there.

Moving on with the rants.. my dear friend Tasha got shafted in that MLB Batgirl contest. It turns out that those jerks at Kom.en don't care how many votes you got, or even whether you're an actual breast cancer survivor - they pick the chicks who have raised the most money and glory for their organization. Goodness knows they haven't found a cure yet, but they sure have raised a lot of awareness.. mainly about how awesome they are and how many pink ribbons they can slap on every product under the sun, most recently pink buckets at KFC, which is so wrong in so many ways. Anywho.. thank you to anyone who may have heeded my plea to vote for Tasha and check out her blog for the full-length rant.