Darwintoo/Stormageddon/StormyD no longer...

 
The placenta is an evolutionary marvel, in my opinion. These beautiful organs have likely been around since just after the (non-avian) dinos got evicted by a very large space rock and 95% of the 5500 living mammal species have them (the other 300 species comprise the likes of kangas, roos and platypus superheros that provide lovely pouches or eggs for their wee ones). 

This fantastic sandwich of maternal tissue (the decidua) and embryonic tissue (the chorion) finds its etymology in the Latin word for flat cake. (Placenta-replica cake for my next birthday, please?! The more vascularised, the better!)  >>warning, if you like cake, probs not a great idea to click on that last link! 

 
We have been on our fertility journey for a couple of years so have had a lot of time to think about very important details like what the theme for the nursery is going to be! Those that know me (or have read even one post here) would easily predict Star Wars, Star Trek, Buffy or dinosaurs. Or perhaps lesbian witches (NB: don't view that video if you don't want the beautiful story of Willow and Tara spoiled for you) that travel the Alpha Quadrant in a Corellian YT-1300 Light Freighter searching for vampire dinos?

 
I like naming things. From my cats Velvet (I was 9 and she was soft!), Sammer (she seemed like a Sam) and Willow (I was a burgeoning lesbian with a certain vampire-slayer sidekick on the mind) to my cars Jean-Luc (was white and bald), Rorge (sounded like a Jetson car), Jango (looked like a blue Mandalorian helmet) and Jedi (a Jetta!), finding the proper name for something has always been very important to me. Indeed, as a palaeontologist, I spent far more time looking into etymology than I did researching the functional morphology upon which my thesis was based.

 
Nothing is truly official in this era of virtual socialising until it is up on Facebook. So, K and I are now actually expecting a baby!

There is no doubt that our child is going to be a geek (or if she manages to escape that part of her nurturing, she will be a non-geek who is very well versed is geekdom!). To properly start her journey towards geekhood, a pregnancy announcement involving Doctor Who and Star Wars was absolutely necessary. K is a Whovian  and the best birthday gift she has ever given me is Star Wars sheets (nuff said!).

 
Apparently, neck folds are wonderful diagnostic tools. Between 11weeks and 13weeks 6days, the fluid between the folds in the foetus' neck can be measured in a Nuchal Translucency Scan. These measurements are correlated with maternal blood to give a probability ratio for the risk of Trisomy (a third copy of) in chromosome 13, 18 or 21.

 
K has been on a suite of drugs off and on since we started our fertility  journey 16 months ago. From injections and inhalants to pills and insertions, K has done it all. From Clomid, Bromocriptine and Chorionic Gonadtropin to Menopur, Puragon, Lupron and Orgalutran to Suprefact, Estrace and the dreaded Prometrium (each of them sound like sci-fi planetary systems), K's system has been regulated, controlled, similated, hyperstimulated and shut down completely.

 
The first ultrasound is amazeballs! I wasn't sure what I was expecting but nothing could prepare me for the power of seeing our baby (who is called Darwintoo and considered a girl for now) for the first time. And that heartbeat brought me to tears (and is again as I write this :)). Both K and I found ourselves uttering very obvious things like "there's a baby in there"! I wasn't even that eloquent but at least I didn't go into sci-fi because I was definitely thinking about Aliens.

 
Today is our first ultrasound. If all goes well we should find out if we have one, two, three, four (or more!) babies on the go!

We debated whether or not to put in two embryos. I was concerned for K's health (she has injured her back in the past) any the babies' health and, between you and me, am a little scared of two babies (let alone two babies all at once!). We went with two to increase our odds of getting pregnant, especially given the journey (emotional and physical) that this has been. Note: a recent study suggests that our logic on that isn't entirely sound.

 
They say that pregnant women experience vivid dreams. This seems to be a function of funky hormones as well as better dream recall due to frequent waking (if the baby moves or the bladder calls).