12 week appointment

6/8/10
The minutes passed by slowly, I closed my eyes and prayed. I prayed for peace, for good news, and for that sound.

A few more minutes passed by.

I looked up and caught Matt’s eyes; I could see some worry creeping into the innermost part of his soul.

I moved my eyes away from his so that I would not begin to cry. I kept my eyes forward on the nurse. She tried one spot, then the next, then began talking. She then tried a new spot.

Lub-dub, lub-dub, lub-dub.

My face lit up, my smile was as big as it was on our wedding day.

We sat and listened for nearly a minute. I had made it. We had made it. We had reached the impervious 12 week milestone; our baby was doing perfect and had a perfect heartbeat of 168 beats per minute.

We are now at a very, very low risk of having another miscarriage.

The doctor came in, did an exam and announced, “You are definitely very pregnant!” Excellent, I didn’t really want to be only partially pregnant anyway.

I want to shout from the rooftops, I want to never stop smiling, I want to do back flips (oh wait, I’m too chubby for that, and too worried it would hurt my growing baby), instead, I’ll just continue to wear this huge smile and growing belly with pride.

All that it has taken to get to this point has worn me out. I never imagined having to go through what we did in the last year and half to reach this point, but none of it matters now. Now I will concentrate on this beautifully growing baby, and attempt to feel joy instead of worry.

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Our appointment yesterday went very well. It started out a little rough for many reasons. For some irrational reason I've had this fear the entire pregnancy that there would be no heartbeat at 12 weeks. Yesterday was obviously that 12 week appointment. As we sat in the waiting room a husband and son sat across from us. A few minutes into our wait the wife came out, not looking too happy, but not crying or visibly shaken. I saw her turn to her husband and say what I thought was "they couldn't find a heartbeat, they are trying to fit me into ultrasound right now". Surely I was hearing things since this is what had been on my mind. I told Matt what I thought she had said, and he sat for a while, and then confirmed that yes, that's what was going on. My heart sank, my stomach hurt, and my intestines rumbled. We sat for about ten more minutes, and then she was called back by the ultrasound tech. A minute later we were called back to our room.

The nurse came in, told me to get on the table, and she began using the doppler on my lower belly to find the heartbeat. She tried the left side, then the middle, then the right. As my writing above already said, it took awhile... all the while I was thinking of the women in ultrasound. For some reason I never really got worried while she was searching for the heartbeat, maybe because of the other woman, maybe not.


After she found the heartbeat I was elated. But as we sat waiting for the doctor I continued to think of this woman and her family. I have thought about her all day. I can't imagine the pain she may be going through.

The doctor then came in and I had a full appointment. I asked a few questions about my Crohn's medicine and nursing, some lab work, and a few other things. The doctor said she would look into some of the research and call me again this week with some answers... I love this lady. She has asked that we see her again for our 16 week appointment, and then after that we will begin rotating through the practice to meet the other doctors.

We are thrilled with today's outcome. I'm beyond surprised to already feel a little bit more calm about this pregnancy. We were able to schedule our 20 week ultrasound on August 2nd to find out the gender of the baby, followed the next day by a trip to IKEA to buy nursery furniture and other "things". =)

Life is good.