26 Weeks - 11.5 week checkup

I am so blessed to have had so many warm thoughts and comments on my last blog - they meant to much heading into today's appointment!  (Cheryl's comment came through on my phone while I was in the waiting room - it made me smile!)

All of those thoughts and prayers must have worked, because the appointment went great!  The doctor found the heartbeat without any trouble at all, and it was right on track with the number of beats per minute.  (As my friend Lowell and I were just discussing, it's the most beautiful sound in the world.)  He walked into the room and asked me how I was - I pointed out that I didn't have any pants on, so that really told the tale better than me.  He laughed and said that I'd need to get used to it - we'll be doing either a manual cervical check or an ultrasound at every appointment (rotating between them, and I'll have appts every other week) starting four weeks after the cerclage.  I didn't actually have the exam today (so I don't have any length/dilation updates so that people can figure out the square footage of my cervix), but everything is right on track for the cerclage on 1/18.

He also made me feel a lot better about different questions I had.  I explained that my peri didn't want me to throw up (so that it didn't put any pressure), but that the Zofran prescription wasn't really cutting it for me.  He gave me a second prescription for Reglan, so that should improve things.  I stop my progesterone shots and estrogen patches on Saturday evening, so I asked about a couple of other pills that my RE had me taking.  I can stop the baby aspirin immediately - he's not really a fan of its use at all since it can cause placental abruption, but we're past the point where it would be necessary for fertility purposes.  I also wondered about my Metformin (1500 mg).  He first pointed out that we're mostly past the chance of first trimester loss, and it's mostly used to make women with PCOS ovulate, which I obviously am not doing right now (although there are some studies that show that it reduces the chance of miscarriage).  He then also pointed out that my PCOS is pretty hard to predict - I've got "lean PCOS" (which just means that I'm average to small weight, which is not a traditional symptom), and that Metformin didn't help me ovulate at all.  The likelihood of it helping me out with the last couple of weeks of preventing miscarriage is probably then pretty low - but the chances of it making me nauseous are incredibly high.  Hence, I'm also off of the Metformin.  He said I could probably also get off of my folic acid (since the neural tube closes at 6 weeks, it doesn't really do anything after that) if it was really making me gag to take the pill, but I'll just stay on that because I'm paranoid.

I'm pretty sure that we're going to call tomorrow and schedule the NT scan, assuming that insurance pays for it.  We wouldn't even think of doing anything differently if it showed a problem, but I just like to be prepared.