Unconditional

I had my first doctor’s appointment last week. This first appointment is always the scariest for me. I never really BELIEVE that I am pregnant until I can see/hear it for myself. No, no. The 12 positive tests don’t do it for me. I want more proof.

So of course I go in and I am nervous, so my blood pressure is on the high side of normal, which it never is – except for those first few appointments at the baby doctor. My anxiety kicks in and all the thoughts of what could be wrong start playing through my head, which is silly, I know – but you tell my anxiety to go away. I’ve been trying for years. Then she asks proceeds to tell me that it is a 50-50 chance that at 10 weeks we will hear the heartbeat. I know this, and I tell her that with the last baby, Brooklyn, we heard it right away, but with Wyatt, we could not find it at this appointment. I proceeded to cry and my wonderful doctor, who is now retired, took one look at me and sent me to ultrasound to find the baby. As I’m telling my new(er) doctor this story, I can see in her eyes what she is thinking. Oh Lord, we have a crier. So she searches and searches for the heartbeat, and all we can hear is my lunch digesting. The whole time, she is reassuring me, I’m really not worried about this, I think I’ve heard it a few times, but I can’t get it in strong enough. I’m really not worried, everything appears as it should. Of course her constant assurance is now making me paranoid. Hello anxiety – go away! So after a good 10 minutes with no luck she asks if I would like to have an ultrasound or wait and come back in two weeks. Being the people pleaser that I am I say, You’re the doctor! What do you think? She smartly responds, No, you are the patient and if you are not comfortable waiting for two weeks, I will order the ultrasound for you. I want to reach up and hug her.

So I go down to the ultrasound department, they get me right in and start the process. At first all we see is a bunch of goobily gook, black and white nonsense (good thing I never became an ultrasound technician or a radiologist), then I see it. A little blob inside a small bubble. As she zooms in closer, I notice that it is not moving much. I swear I remember from Wyatt’s 10 week ultrasound that he was moving and kicking all over the place. PANIC starts to set in. The tech zooms in a little closer, it now looks no more like a baby, but a bigger blob on the screen. A very still blob. I can feel the tears start prickling in my eyes when she announces There it is! See that little movement? That’s the heartbeat. Sure enough, I could see it too. Right in the middle of the blob. The blob, I could now see had two little arms. They seemed to wave at me, like Hi mom! Scared ya didn’t I? I was napping! You haven’t had your caffeine for the day yet! The tech then measured the heartbeat – 168 beats per minute. Exactly what Wyatt was at this same ultrasound. The tears that were, one second ago, sad tears, start running down my face and instantly they have changed to happy tears. I am once again, for the third time in my life, reminded how strange it is to love someone so much that you have never even met.

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