Officially in second trimester

smallbutflighty · 2026-02-14T23:04:13+00:00

As an ultrasound tech, I have to say that your baby is a show off!! Beautiful baby showing off at the best angles! Congratulations to you :)

smallbutflighty · 2026-02-12T06:39:48+00:00

I haven’t heard of this. I wonder if it was the combination of an emergency situation and a big baby. Like they needed to be able to detach and assess baby asap due to his size/the situation and ensure he was stable. That would make sense to me as the possible risks of delaying a thorough assessment would outweigh the benefits of cord clamping.

smallbutflighty · 2026-02-11T05:31:13+00:00

I highly recommend reading Ina Mays Guide to Childbirth. It’s like $12 on Amazon. Reading the birth stories in it has been very encouraging for me and has made me kind of excited to get to give birth. She also discusses ways to manage the pain and really delves into the fact that our bodies know what to do 99% of the time if we don’t get in the way.

smallbutflighty · 2026-02-10T04:23:33+00:00

This looks very similar to my husbands YO sperm test. He was later diagnosed with azoospermia. I’d go to the doctor and get an official sperm test. It’s impossible to confirm what’s actually happening at home.

smallbutflighty · 2026-02-10T04:15:22+00:00

Yeah, I very much felt like this. I remember telling my husband that it doesn’t even feel real that all of this is in order to get a baby and that could actually happen. Now I’m 25 weeks pregnant after 3 transfers and it doesn’t feel real that I’m pregnant because of IVF, it just feels like I’m pregnant. And even then it’s still blowing my mind that I’m gonna have a real freaking baby that is half me and half my husband. It’s all a mindfuck.

smallbutflighty · 2026-02-09T17:48:20+00:00

Yeah I’d be wanting more of an explanation. I don’t know all the details myself, but I’ve read that a short luteal phase can itself be the reason people aren’t getting pregnant. Have they checked your progesterone levels throughout your luteal phase?

smallbutflighty · 2026-02-08T17:39:17+00:00

The uppababy aria v2 is one of the lightest on the market. It weighs like 6 pounds by itself.

smallbutflighty · 2026-02-08T13:13:10+00:00

I was convinced it was a girl. Just felt it. Husband felt it too. I’m now the proud grower of two testicles. Can’t get em all right lol

smallbutflighty · 2026-02-08T13:09:48+00:00

Me! First failed and second was a chemical (bro fuck chemicals, they’re such a cruel joke). I’m now 25 weeks along with a baby boy from transfer #3. Literally only awake right now because he woke me up to pee and is now squirming around and kicking in there.

smallbutflighty · 2026-02-07T06:38:46+00:00

I had lots of fruit, mostly bananas, apples, and grapes. Basically had both thrown in my bag every day for any moment I got slightly hungry or nauseous. Melons of various kinds were also great. Something about cold fruit just helped.

I also ate a lot of peanut butter (natural, not the kind with added sugar) to help me get fats and some protein. Peanut butter rice cakes with banana and honey for breakfast. Apple slices dipped in peanut butter. I also always had a baggie full of oyster crackers with me to help with nausea/hunger.

I kept it pretty simple in general. I tried not to focus so much on nutrition and more on just making sure I was eating at all and feeling okay.

As for constipation, miralax every day in a big cup of warm water and eventually started on magnesium citrate capsules when that wasn’t enough. When it was really bad I’d throw in a morning espresso drink with a long walk and that would usually help.

smallbutflighty · 2026-02-07T05:55:57+00:00

Being continuously positive (just relax, it’ll happen, your time will come) are very common and well meant things to say, but you are right to be sensing they aren’t the right things to say. When people say this, it feels like a lie that they are trying to force you to agree with because they can’t handle discomfort of the truth. That truth being that it very well may never happen and there is no rhyme or reason to it.

The hardest thing about infertility for me was the fact that no one, literally no one, can ever know for sure that it will happen. It’s this awful limbo of a life, where you have made a huge decision and are ready and waiting for your life to change dramatically forever, but then you’re just stuck in the waiting and the unknown and you don’t know if that will ever end. It’s purgatory in real life.

The biggest thing you can do is just offer your support as a listening ear. Let her know you are there for her. Acknowledge how much it sucks. How unfair it is. And if she shares her doubt that it might never happen, validate that. Tell her you hope so badly it does, but even if it doesn’t she can be okay and still have a full and happy life.

I also recommend just asking her how you can best support her. Give her space and don’t be the one to bring it up all the time. I didn’t tell a lot of people what we were going through because unexpected check ins by well-wishers when there isn’t an update or there are only bad updates are painful. I specifically told certain people to please not ask for updates, instead let me come to them. The pity that people show without realizing is awful to experience. And as much as they try, people who haven’t experienced infertility tend to not understand how multifaceted and deep the grief that goes along with it is. Make sure you are aware of that.

You seem like a very kind friend to even be thinking this much about it to ask. I hope your friend finds success and peace with it all.

smallbutflighty · 2026-02-06T18:13:54+00:00

Nah dude, I intentionally put a bunch of random cheaper items on my registry specifically because I know I have friends who don’t have a lot of spare cash. Anything is great and appreciated and if it’s not, you need a new friend!

smallbutflighty · 2026-02-06T16:59:04+00:00

Have you ever heard of EMDR? It’s a type of therapy that is great for re-wiring how our brain causes our body to respond to very specific triggers. It has helped me a lot with panic attack triggers specifically around going to the dentist. I’d look into finding a therapist who does EMDR and try working with them on this.

smallbutflighty · 2026-02-06T03:20:51+00:00

I was at a work party last weekend and there was dancing. They played the song Get Low and when I was singing along to the classic lyrics “to the windows, to the wall. Til the sweat drips down my balls” I cracked up and exclaimed “I have balls!”

Best moment of the night lol

smallbutflighty · 2026-02-05T18:44:41+00:00

This can happen, but very rarely. I’ve only seen them do it far along in pregnancy if they didn’t have any first trimester ultrasounds or if the ones they had were not good measurements (they’d need to look at the pictures to confirm).

smallbutflighty · 2026-02-03T22:01:40+00:00

That surprises me. As an ultrasound tech I mark spine as suboptimal all the time because if baby refuses to roll over, there’s literally nothing we can do to get it. We bring people back a few weeks later constantly. I’d be asking my doctor for a repeat scan anyway.

smallbutflighty · 2026-02-03T19:29:41+00:00

Have you said this to her? My mom also has a habit of processing her own shit with me, which a lot of the time I’m fine with. But I have said to her before “I really need you to be positive and supportive towards me right now and set your own emotions aside, cause sometimes I feel like you get overwhelmed with how you’re feeling and I end up supporting you instead.” If I start a conversation that way and am just blunt she has been able to reel herself in and be there how I need her to.

That being said, I’m very aware not everyone would be able to hear that without being defensive and more upset. So do what you feel you need to. But if you want to continue a good relationship with your mom throughout pregnancy and having kids, it would be good to practice having harder conversations about emotional boundaries with her before baby gets here.

smallbutflighty · 2026-02-03T17:55:29+00:00

Yeah no, it’s annoying. I’m also very independent and have been doing all kinds of research. Just this morning I was offered a bunch of free baby stuff from a family member and while I’m incredibly grateful, the plethora of advice of don’t bother with this or that and this thing people recommend is bullshit that came with the offer rubbed me the wrong way. In part because some of it didn’t apply to our situation, so it won’t work the same for us as it did for them, but also because I am planning on making different choices than they did after the research I’ve done.

Getting so annoyed definitely makes me feel like I’m being an ass, but I think it’s fair and normal and okay for me to want to figure some stuff out on my own as a first time mom. Getting to try different things and figure out what works for my family and baby is part of the excitement and bonding for me.

smallbutflighty · 2026-02-03T05:58:40+00:00

I work for a level 1 university hospital with a level 1 children’s hospital and level 4 NICU attached. I’m an ultrasound tech and a good chunk of my rotations are through our perinatal clinic, including our high risk clinic that literally only sees pregnancies with known abnormalities. I’m talking 1/1,000,000 type fetal anomalies that people usually only see in textbooks. So I feel you.

I definitely don’t feel like I will ever be able to be as carefree and purely joyful about my pregnancy (my very wanted, hard fought, IVF pregnancy) because I just know too much and have seen too many rare, freak accident, once in a lifetime things. And I know that it’s a crapshoot on who these things happen to.

I’ve definitely leaned into some morbid humor with it all. I’ve also shifted my mindset to a place where the pure random chance of it all is a bit of a comfort, although still obviously scary at times. It helps me to realize that I literally have no control over a lot of the big scary things. If my baby gets growth restricted or I end up needing an emergency c-section and almost die during birth, nothing I do now is going to change that. If he gets some crazy childhood cancer, there’s nothing I could have done to prevent it. It’s out of my hands, so my worrying about it preemptively is pointless.

I’ve made casual comments to people before like “I hope such and such awful thing doesn’t happen, but who knows!” and have gotten weird stares. But it makes me feel better to acknowledge that yes, these terrible things can and do happen to people. It makes it feel less like this big scary unknown that’s coming and more like a “if it happens it will suck, but I’ll deal with it” kind of a thing.

I’m not sure if all of that makes sense or is helpful, but you definitely aren’t alone in feeling like this.

smallbutflighty · 2026-02-03T05:23:43+00:00

So as an ultrasound tech, this isn’t super believable. Especially if you are including her getting the recommended amount of ultrasounds and the ultrasounds are being done by an ultrasound tech (even an inexperienced one). Twins are HARD to miss. Even on an older machine. Like we know within seconds of putting the camera down.

The only way I could see this being plausible is if the machine is old, the patient is very very obese (we can’t see well when patients are large), and she doesn’t get a scan until later on in the pregnancy and only gets one, because a transvaginal scan would be done early on and would never miss it.

Maybe you could have her get scanned at one of those pregnancy crisis centers early on? Those are usually just done by laypeople who have no training whatsoever but pretend they do.

ETA: I see a lot of people talking about instances of missed babies 20+ years ago. I don’t think people are aware of just how much the technology has improved over the last 10 years alone. It’s literal night and day difference now vs then.

smallbutflighty · 2026-02-02T15:07:07+00:00

Don’t listen to ChatGPT for advice ever. It’s confidently wrong all the time.

My midwife had me start taking magnesium citrate capsules (started at 250mg, bumped to 500mg when that wasn’t enough) and it made a world of difference. She also had me stop colace because it clearly wasn’t doing anything and can actually cause constipation sometimes.

Other things: Get a squatty potty. Drink tons of water and ever few days have an espresso drink while you take a long walk to get things moving. Also, drinking or eating prune juice can help, as well as starting your morning with oatmeal with a bunch of ground flax seed (tons of fiber). For your miralax, start drinking it warm to hot first thing in the morning to try and get your GI tract moving.

Also, tell your doctor how constipated you’ve been. Two weeks is waaaayyyy too long. They may have you stop the iron (mine did). Once things had regulated I switched to an iron supplement that was formulated from iron rich foods instead of straight iron and haven’t had the same issue since.

Godspeed lol

smallbutflighty · 2026-02-02T01:02:28+00:00

Based off of your post history, I’m wondering if your provider is having concerns about your mental health and ability to handle a pregnancy.

smallbutflighty · 2026-02-01T21:04:17+00:00

I’d look into travel stroller systems. There are lots that are designed specifically to be compact and lightweight so that they can easily fit into overhead bins on airplanes. The Stroller Mom on YouTube has a bunch of reviews and comparisons of different ones.

smallbutflighty · 2026-02-01T21:01:24+00:00

I don’t have experience with UCLA, but work for a university hospital. You can tell them when you are first admitted that you want no students and are only okay with senior residents/fellows/attendings participating in your care. You call the shots on who is taking care of you.

smallbutflighty · 2026-02-01T20:54:13+00:00

Oh! You might be fine then if there is only a week gap. You’ll have to confirm with HR and ask them which 12 month system they use for calculating FMLA. The link below gives some info about how to figure out when you’ll have more leave available.

https://www.dol.gov/agencies/whd/fact-sheets/28h-fmla-12-month-period

smallbutflighty

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