Playing the waiting game

Well, I've finally found a few minutes to sit in front of the computer and write about my first prenatal appointment on Monday.

It was largely uneventful. We went through my family history, Mr. Legalosaur's family history, and then an annual physical. Including the lovely internal exam and pap … that we all love to hate. I got a bunch of requisitions for all sorts of medical tests, including a full STD panel (oh joy!) and blood typing.

She didn't bring the Doppler into the office with her. I asked if we might try to find the baby's heartbeat, explaining that I knew the chances at this point in the game were only 50/50 of being successful, and promising that I wouldn't freak out if we couldn't find it. She agreed that we could give it a whirl, but with my retroverted uterus and the stage of gestation, she didn't hold out much hope.

Unfortunately, she was right and we were not able to find the heartbeat with the Doppler. My uterus is still snug within the pelvic cavity and she thinks the baby was just hiding. She did tell me my placenta sounded very healthy, and that the size of my uterus for 11 weeks is excellent. Since there's no ultrasound machine in that office, that was that.

Despite her encouraging words, I still feel like I'm hanging in limbo, or my own special form of purgatory. She told me last time, with my miscarriage, just a day before we found out our babe died three weeks earlier, that everything looked good and felt absolutely normal. This just proves to me how little we humans really know about pregnancy and gestation, despite thinking that we're all that and a bag of chips. (And I really do trust my doctor, she's a good physician, so I'm not convinced that it was human error last time.)

So now what? What else...? I wait. Wait until I go back on Tuesday to try again. At least she's letting me come in weekly to see if we can catch the heartbeat. I know some doctors send you away for a good 4 weeks before seeing you again. I couldn't deal with that.

Being that I've waited so long to tell my parents and my sister about this pregnancy, I've decided to just wait until we can find the heartbeart before sharing the news. I still don't feel like telling them, especially dealing with my mother asking me if I'm eating properly and telling me what to do. And with no ultrasound on the horizon except for the one I have scheduled at 19 weeks, the heartbeat is all I can rely on until then…

It's going to be a loooooooong next 6 days…