Are You In There?

There is nothing worse than lying on the table at Dr. Man's and having him say "I can't find it."

That happened when Tommy was supposedly 8 weeks grown but was really only 2 weeks grown. And my womb was empty. Remember that?

Well this time when we saw Dr. Man the first time NBE was right on schedule and "with a heartbeat that strong the chance of miscarriage is less than 1%".

So this morning I headed up to Dr. Man's ready to hear NBE's heartbeat since we only got to see it last time.

Dr. Man held that radio thing up to his ear and shook and moved the thing around on my "tummy" and played with the tuner to make sure it was working and moved and moved and angled and we heard nothing but fuzz. Although Dr. Man is an expert and certainly knows how his equipment works, I wanted to tell him to push harder. That I knew that baby was in there and that he simply needed to make contact with my spine in order to hear the heartbeat. I kept my ideas to myself.

After a few minutes of listening to my fuzzy insides with no fwapfwapfwap of NBE's heart, Dr. Man said "Well let's move you to the ultrasound room and see if that baby's still in there."

I took a deep breathe and cried a little inside and looked at my watch when he said "it'll be about 5 minutes because I've got someone else in there. I'll be back for you soon."

I stared at my watch for the first 2 minutes counting down the seconds. I stopped counting to say a silent prayer, then got out my book to try to distract myself. I read the same page 4 times before I figured out that I hadn't turned the page when I was through. I was busy thinking of all the things that had happened in the past 4 weeks. Wouldn't I have noticed if NBE had left? Fell out? Disappeared?

Finally Dr. Man came back and we did an ultrasound. Turns out NBE is sitting significantly higher than he Dr. Man expected, but everything is OK.

Good heartbeat - nice face holes (I think they don't usually do ultrasounds at this point because the alien-skull look is at it's peak) and happy to swim around and wave at us.

NBE may or may not have been just looking for a photo-opportunity. I have yet to hear the heartbeat but am far from disappointed.  NBE is "still in there" and lookin' good albeit squished up high.

Mostly I'm just relieved. Relieved like a relieved Jen Ford. And oh so glad I didn't have to wait a month (or more) to find out that everything is fine.