Pregnant Pause

Dare I say it? Morning sickness abating. After a miserable weekend, today I feel…just hungry. No nausea. I feel like there should be choirs singing.

Moving on: Thursday, Viva had her 5-year annual checkup. She is 44” tall and 40.5 pounds (i.e. a string bean). They tested her eyesight (fine) and hearing (great). She also had five shots, which was probably on par with one of the most horrible experiences of her life. I know I am pregnant and all (and thus, more emotional than usual), but she made me cry.

She did not sleep well that night, and in the morning, had a fever. No school for her, no work for me. Since Sweet Dub had to have blood work done anyway due to the whole cystic fibrosis thing, and I already had an appointment that morning, all three of us ended up at my OB-GYN’s Friday morning. It was quite lovely that all three of us were then able to see Baby (who I guess technically I should be referring to as Fetus, since s/he has already graduated from Embryo) via ultrasound. Fetus/Baby Blah already has arms, which s/he seemed pretty excited about, because s/he was waving them around to beat the band. I remember seeing Viva at this stage and she was pretty mellow, floating around, maybe dozing or something. Not this kid. This one is on the move. Yikes.

Then we discussed genetic testing. Dr. B said to me, “So, Lisa, are you, um, half-Caucasian?” What a loaded question. Rather than get into the whole family history of miscegenation dating back to slavery, my descent from what were pretty much tri-racial "Black Indians," and the slew of “high yalla,” “mulatto,” and “light, bright, and damn near white” folks in my family background, I simply said, “Yes.”

“Well,” she said. “That makes sense then. Cystic fibrosis is much more common among Caucasians.* That makes it highly unlikely that your husband has it.”

I looked over at my husband, who is descended himself from a mixture of Louisiana Creoles, Africans and Indians. His complexion is a very dark chocolate, but like most African-Americans, his family runs the gamut in terms of skin color. He has Caucasian blood too, just as I do. It is funny to me that people on the street will look at us and see an inter-racial couple, when in reality we are both such a mix of similar things. At any rate, I didn't get into that with Dr. B. I'm sure she already has a lot on her mind, and to be honest, I'm too lazy/non-confrontational to throw all that at her.

I’ve already been tested for sickle cell (more common among African-Americans), so we don’t need to do that. We are debating, if it turns out that Dub is a CF carrier, whether we will do amniocentesis to see if Fetus/Baby Blah has it. Oy. And what then?

I got another ultrasound picture, and you can see how much Fetus/Baby Blah has grown in only two weeks, which is cool. I’ll see if I can enlarge and scan it so you can take a look at the blob.

One more thing: we did go back and look at the rental house.** Not only were certain issues with the house not resolved to our satisfaction, but at the end of our walk-through we noticed painted-over graffiti on the garage door. That was pretty much the end. So, no go. We are back to the more sensible track of pre-qualifying for a mortgage and scoping out neighborhoods with good public schools. More to come on that…

* And fibroids, which I also have, are more common among African-Americans. I really ended up with the genetic short stick in some ways.

** If you click back on the link, you'll see I said I didn't want to jinx our Really Big News (about moving). And then I said, "No, I'm not pregnant." I think at that point my period was already late, but I was just in Denial. (It's nice there, have you been?)