Out, Damned (Brown) Spot!

Just in case I was missing the drama, in case I was allowing myself to inch too closely to a feeling of relief and total acceptance that this was really happening, a square of toilet paper this morning revealed another reason for concern: brown spotting. Or discharge. I don't know quite what to call it, and I'm sorry to be providing this kind of detail anyway, but it is germane to this conversation. All I know is that it was brown, and it was coming out of me while there is a baby in me. Actually it wasn't even quite coming out – it was just the tinest of amounts on the toilet paper itself. But still.

So...I called the doctor and the rest of the details will be too mundane and exhausting to recall here. But the bottom line is they tried using that doppler thing, the nurse claimed she heard the heart beating but I didn't, she quickly got the picture that I wouldn't be satisfied until I saw it beating and then they gave me an "unofficial" ultrasound. Which showed the heart beating, measurements of 11 weeks and nothing obviously awry. So you know what they do then? Absolutely nothing. Nada. They say it's probably nothing and send you on your merry way. But that doesn't make the spotting stop, and it doesn't make your mind stop either.

I then did what any girl who'd just gone through a heck of a lot to get to this point – I mean, I'm sorry, new doctor's office, but I am not one of your footloose and fancy free normal patients – would do: I obsessed until I came up with an explanation for the spotting. And that was the fact that I stopped my progesterone last week. But that didn't really solve anything – in fact it just created more complication and required more effort, like a call to my RE's office to explore that possibility, and then a call back to the OB's office. The bottom line: Nobody, absolutely nobody, thinks it's from low progesterone. Everyone thinks it's just some flukey, minor thing and I shouldn't worry about it. But I? Am going to the OB's office in the morning for a progesterone check. Because I can. And because I need to know that I'm doing all I can to prevent Bad Things from happening.

I swear that if the spotting really stops (it hasn't gotten any worse today and seems to be largely gone tonight) and my integrated screening (NT scan/bloodwork) goes well next Wednesday I am going to try – really try – to assume that things are going to work. So when something like this happens, I automatically think that it's probably nothing, instead of probably something. That will be my wish for myself tomorrow, as I blow out the candles and bid welcome to 33.