One Scared Nurse

At the end of November, we had our first actual OB appointment. This was billed as the "fun" appointment that I should bring Dan to...even now I am not sure about what was the "fun" part. I was ill-prepared to have a full pelvic exam in the presence of my husband. We did laugh about it later, though. 
I sent this message to our immediate family:


Date: Wed, Nov 30, 2011 at 7:17 PM
Subject: Stage: fetus

Mom and Dad and Pam and sisters and bro,

We had a prenatal appointment today and I wasn't nervous, but the nurse was. 

When she listened as I talked about how I really didn't have many symptoms, she started talking to me about how that might be a red flag. (Then she asked me a series of other questions. Like: had I experienced heavy bleeding, what about cramping, etc.) Then she felt my uterus and could not feel the baby. Then she listened for the heartbeat and there wasn't any (which isn't that abnormal this early on).  Then she did an ultrasound using the internal wand and got SUPER excited when she found the baby. She motioned for Dan to come over to look (think: excited waving of the arms, huge smile) and he got to see the pictures. He wheeled the machine around so I could see. It was pretty amazing.

The body was facing us, so we could see the head, belly, knees. It moved (or the nurse moved) and we saw the arms and legs move back and forth. We could see the heartbeat inside the chest. And, it looked like a human being. The picture she printed doesn't do it justice.

So, we laughed about how nervous she was and how she was trying to keep her cool during the entire exam. She was so excited to tell us that she thought everything looked great and was developing perfectly. She thought we were right on schedule for our due date and that all was well. She said she felt pretty confident we'd get through "this last little bit" (3 weeks until the first trimester is over) and that we'd all breathe a sigh of relief. I'll keep you all posted as we close in on Christmas so we can all sigh collectively and then spill the beans to everyone we know. :-)

Love to you all,

Liz