Our next OB Appointment

5.5.14

     That afternoon, after I went to work and tried to keep it together, we had our next OB appointment. I was 12 weeks and 5 days along, so this appointment didn't include a sonogram (ugh).
     After signing in and doing the obligatory weigh-in complete with blood pressure check, Alex and I went and waited in the room for Dr. L.
     As she came in, she got the little hand-held doppler ready to listen for a heartbeat through my belly. I laid back on the table with Alex sitting at the foot of the bed and waited.
    Dr. L gooped up the probe and started searching. I can honestly say it was the longest pause that I had been through in a very long time. Everything was quiet and I was staring at the ceiling willing that heartbeat to be heard loud and clear.
    Silence.
    Moving the probe around and around, still not hearing the heartbeat.
    After about a minute I had to start willing myself to breathe. Everything is fine, everything is okay, probably just another stubborn child, I told myself.
    Finally, after about two agonizing minutes (if you think that's not long, sit in absolute silence and purposefully listen for a noise for that long), we finally heard it.
    Woosh woosh woosh woosh woosh woosh woosh woosh.
    I let out a huge sigh and said, "There it is. There's my baby."
    Dr. L said, "Yup!"
    "Can you leave it there for just a second?" I asked- just as soon as the sound had disappeared.
    "Well I'm trying, but do you hear all those little thumps? That's your baby moving around. This is a very active baby! That's why it took me a minute to find the heartbeat. I heard the movements and knew everything was fine, but I knew you needed to hear the heartbeat before I said that." Dr. L said kind of giggling as she said this one is active.
      She helped me sit up on the bed and we talked about how everything was going. I had an appointment with the high-risk OB the following Wednesday, so I updated her on that. She was excited that we would get to know the gender (supposedly) and that we were taking extra precautions this time.
       Once she left the room, I stayed perched on the bed for a second longer and looked sideways at Alex.
      "Do you see why I wasn't worried about Kaitlyn when we were in pre-op? She was the same way. Stubborn as hell and didn't want to let anyone check in on her..." I sighed as I hopped off the table.
       He slowly nodded his head, but I could tell he had been as anxious as I was in the delay in finding the heartbeat.