Get Back to Where You Once Belonged

Lately, I've been riding the U.S.S. Queasy, and in response I've been incorporating more cooked foods into my diet and eating a lot more. Dumb response! It makes me grouchy. I've also developed aversions to foods that I used to like: tea, raw corn and collards, for example. Sad!

Here were yesterday's food choices (no judgments!):

2 green juices with lemon and ginger
2 vitamins, spaced throughout the day
Mutsu apple
salad with olives, artichoke hearts, carrots, celery, tomato
cucumber/avocado roll (brown rice)
can of organic mixed beans
raw meal: chili, salad, nut pate wrap
5 rice cakes with olive oil

It could be worse, but I feel really gross, gassy and ill. I also have a little headache and extra tiredness from going off tea. Lovely.

Recommendations: I bought a few books about pregnancy over 35: Your Over-35 Week-by-Week Pregnancy Guide by Kelly Shanahan and Healthy Pregnancy Over 35 by Laura Goetzl. Both were useful, especially in terms of clarifying the risks and benefits of pre-natal testing.

More on chromosomal abnormalities and testing: I learned that, at my age (almost 40), the risk for having a child with a chromosomal abnormality is about 1.5%, with the risk of having a child with Down's Syndrome at about .8%.

These risk levels are based on all women my age, though. In order to get a more accurate risk level for my pregnancy, I would have a blood test and an ultrasound to measure the nuchal translucency (a transparency at the back of the neck) of the fetus. You can do this at any point from 11-14 weeks. The measurements of specific blood levels and the gap at the back of the fetus's neck will help the doctor to assign a risk level that not only applies to your age group, but also to your particular situation. There is no risk to doing this sort of test. Based on these measurements, about 25% of women my age will test "positive" for chromosomal abnormality -- that just means that the odds are greater than 1 in 250 or .4%. So most women who test positive are still not going to have a chromosomal abnormality, but they are at high risk.

If you're at high risk (or even if you're not), you can find out for sure if there are abnormalities through an invasive test. You can do an early test (CVS), which carries with it a 1% chance of miscarriage, or a later test (amniocentesis), which carries a .5% change of miscarriage. The early test can be done at 10 weeks, and the later test can be done at 15-18 weeks. So, you just have to weigh the risks and make the decision that feels safest to you.

Chromosomal abnormalities appear when the unfertilized egg has an extra chromosome. It's just a glitch that, like most glitches, happens increasingly with age. Some abnormalities lead to painful, brief lives for the child; some lead to more manageable situations. Once you know the prognosis, it's really your choice.

The nitty gritty: grouchy! queasy! tired! Working out and drinking green juice help, but I don't always get to do that. It's so irritating that, at this point, I really need some slack at work, but I can't tell anyone that I need it. Plus, my breasts have gone National Geographic on me. But all in all, I have to be grateful that I've made it this far. If I can get to tomorrow, I'll have completed 8 weeks! 25% of women my age miscarry, and 80% of those miscarry in the first 8 weeks... so once you get to 9 or 10 weeks, your chances of miscarriage go down to about 5%.

Of course, statistics don't mean anything on an individual level. But I still take comfort from the illusion of measurable, manageable risk.