No Child Left Behind, 2nd edition

I had my first appointment with the midwife yesterday.  I know most women see their prenatal provider more like 8-10 weeks into a pregnancy, but since I had an ultrasound at 8 weeks, and since I was already on the Prometrium, I decided to wait until I would be able to hear the heartbeat on the doppler to go in.  I was nervous but excited.  The first appointment is another step in making the pregnancy real, as is hearing the heartbeat.  I made an early appointment because I've had problems before having to wait a long time to be seen at this clinic.  I like the place, and they're the only midwives in Nashville (that I can find) that do hospital births.  And fortunately, they do theirs at Vanderbilt, since that's the cheapest place for us to deliver on Wes's healthcare coverage.

I did get seen very quickly.  They weighed me, took my vitals, and I chatted with the midwife a little bit.  And then came the part I was nervous about.  She got out the doppler, and I pulled up my shirt and laid back.  And then she turned on the doppler and started looking.  And kept looking.  She made a comment about the baby kicking a lot, moving around, but she couldn't find a heartbeat.  She looked for several minutes before she stopped, calmly, and said she was sending me for an ultrasound.  Wes wasn't with me at the appointment.  He was sleeping off a late shift, and I didn't think was that important for him to be there.  So I got the order from the front desk, got back in my car, and drove down the street to the ultrasound facility where I had my 8-week scans.  I alternated between preparing myself for a fetus that had not developed past the last scan (when it did have a heartbeat) and knowing that there was a chance the midwife just couldn't find the heartbeat.

The ultrasound office saw me quickly, too.  The technician asked if a Vanderbilt ultrasound student could come in, and I consented.  They need practice, I figured, even if the news was not good.  One day, they would have to give some woman bad news, too.  But after I put on the gown and laid down on the table, they quickly found the baby, measuring almost a week ahead of my dates, and with a nice, strong heartbeat between 155-170 bpm.  It was moving around a lot at some points, and the ultrasound tech said that can make it hard to get a heartbeat on the doppler, especially when it's still so small.  All I could think of was my first midwife's appointment when I was pregnant with Oliver, when the midwife couldn't see anything on the transabdominal ultrasound, and Wes and I sat for 45 minutes waiting for a transvaginal scan to show up that there was, in fact, a baby in there.  I don't know if it's because the tech knew I had been worried or because she was teaching or because she was just having fun, but she spent a while in there looking around, taking pictures, and talking to me about what she saw.  The baby looked great and finally looked like an actual baby.

I had to go back to the midwife's office afterwards.  I waited for a long time for them to get the ultrasound report, but they finally took me back.  I told the midwife what I knew, which she was happy to hear, and I asked several more questions I had about the practice and prenatal care.  The whole thing took almost three hours, and I ended up missing my class because of it (the only class I missed during my entire master's program!).  I thought I would go back at 16 weeks, since I was seen every 4 weeks at my former clinic, but she said I could wait until 18 weeks and see her after the anatomy scan.  Her office scheduled it on my way out, so on August 12 we'll hopefully know the gender (and that everything looks okay), and I'll see the midwife the next day.

I hate the worry that I had for those 45 minutes or so, but if the worst my babies do in utero is hide from the ultrasound and doppler wands, that's fine by me.  I'm praying that the next appointment will be somewhat less exciting.