First contact

Yesterday was my first prenatal appointment, and I was a bit scared. I keep being afraid that my doctor will be the bearer of bad news despite my pregnancy symptoms continuing. Silly I know, but there it is. Since we know the dating very well (only 2 days with any sperm in my body at all), there was no need for an ultrasound to try to date the age of the fetus. We were a little bummed but not for long once we realized that we'd get to hear a heartbeat via the doppler. Shannon and I were both very excited to get some tangible evidence that there's a real life little parasite in there. Unfortunately our doctor couldn't find the heartbeat (cue the omnious music).

This, however, turned out to be excellent because it allowed us to get an ultrasound after all. We got an appointment at the hospital for later in the afternoon, so we only had a few hours to obsess over if the baby was dead. I drank a bunch of water in preparation for the ultrasound since a full bladder, although uncomfortable, is helpful. At the hospital, the ultrasound technician was gentle and friendly. We got to business with the gel (warm not cold at all) on my abdomen and then, ta-da, fetus on the screen! It was flipping and rolling and bouncing all over the place. It's about 2 inches long and looks just like the curled up generic mammal fetus that you've seen before. My uterus looked the like size of a papaya or grapefruit. Turns out it is retrograde which probably caused the difficulty finding the heartbeat with the doppler. We had some stills printed out for us so we'll put those up soon. The tech turned on the sound and then we heard the heartbeat. It was a very fast 176 beats/minute, just like a cat. Talk about surreal and thrilling moments, lying in the dark with your partner listening to the heartbeat of the little creature growing inside you.