Week 8 thru 12

      Starting at week 8, the few symptoms I had completely disappeared. So of course, being me, I started to freak out that something was horribly wrong. Having those scares at the beginning left me a little on edge that we were just playing a waiting game for everything to come crashing down on us. After worrying and fretting and everything for a full week, I called the OB’s office and explained everything that was happening. Since it had been my primary care doctor that had ordered the tests and ultrasounds in the beginning (I wasn’t “established” yet  at that point with the OB, so they wouldn’t do it) they decided to have me come in for an appointment the following day (9 weeks to the day) instead of waiting 2 weeks for my scheduled appointment. I was a wreck at work, worrying that we were going to discover that I had experience a missed miscarriage. For those of you who don’t know what that is, I’ve decided that it’s even worse than a regular miscarriage. What happens is your baby stops developing, but your body still thinks it’s pregnant. All of your symptoms will continue (usually), and the only way to find out what’s happened is when you go to your next OB appointment and get an ultrasound. So there you are thinking that you’ll get to see your baby, only to discover that your baby stopped growing weeks ago. Isn’t that horrid???
      So we went to the appointment (after basically having to move mountains for Ryan to be there) and we explain to the doctor what was going on. She had me lay down and tried to find the heartbeat with the doppler (a type of ultrasound wand that just picks up sound but has no picture). She tried and tried but couldn’t find it. So of course at this point my anxiety went from high to through the roof. They didn’t have any openings for an ultrasound right then, so we had to return in a hour and a half. Longest wait ever! Finally we went back and checked in for the ultrasound. The ultrasound tech at the OB office went off on this whole monologue on how she wasn’t going to be able to tell us anything and we would have to wait for the doctor to call with the results. So when she started we didn’t have an overly positive feeling, much less any hope for her to find our baby with a healthy heartbeat. When she started moving the wand around and brought our baby into view, we recognized the heartbeat right away (since we had seen it before and knew what to watch for). At that point the tech did verify that it was the heartbeat, and that everything looked great. She said that she had to tell us all that stuff at the beginning in case she DIDN’T find the heartbeat, but since it was there she could tell us everything. Baby was measuring exactly 9 weeks (perfect) and had a healthy heartbeat of 150 bpm. She printed out some pictures of Baby, which is included below. Picture a gummy bear laying on its side facing you, with the head to the right of the picture, and you might be able to figure out what you are looking at. After that appointment, even though my symptoms didn’t return, I could look at that picture and feel peace.

Our little gummy bear!!