shaken, then stirred

This is a story in two parts. The first part is the bad news. The second is the good news. So there is no need to hold your breath while reading the first part.

Thursday evening, we had a bit of scare. I was having a poop (my current obsession with apples is doing wonders for my digestion) and I looked down to see a drop of blood fall in the toilet. My mind froze on just one thought: “no, no, no no, NO!” There was some more blood when I wiped – not a lot, but it was bright red and terrifying. I made my way upstairs and told Manny, and somehow managed to have the presence of mind to call the health line nurse who, like all health line nurses, is an angel in disguise. As she listened to me and started to ask me questions, I could feel myself calming down. No cramping, swelling of feet, hands or face, dizziness, blurred vision, abdominal pain, fever. Nothing other than maybe 1 or 2 milliliters of blood, which by this point had stopped. She said I needed to see a doctor within 24 hours, and that if I felt I needed to go in right away, I should do that, but to watch myself carefully and if the bleeding got worse, or I was cramping or anything else, I should go to the ER immediately. I was surprisingly calm by this point; for whatever reason, I just felt like everything would be ok. The bleeding did not continue or resume, although there was a tiny bit of brown spotting through to the next morning. She also suggested I call the OB/GYN on call at the hospital, which I would never have thought of on my own, although it’s on the voice mail message of my clinic if you call them after hours, which I have inadvertently done at least a dozen times. So I did call, and spoke to the OB, who said I could come in and he could see me, but he wouldn’t be able to to an ultrasound until the morning, so it would probably be better just to come in first thing in the morning.

So that’s what we did. Manny and I were at emergency at 8 on Friday morning. After waiting for 2 hours, we finally got in for an ultrasound. My panic had returned pretty much as soon as we walked in to the hospital, and as we were waiting for the u/s, it was at its peak. For all my excitement to have my first scan on Monday, we were about to find out whether all was indeed well, and the circumstances were not at all as I had imagined. They called my name, and Manny and I went into the little room. The very nice tech told me to hop up on the table, and I had a weird moment of cognitive delay, cause I had the urge to take off my pants. I started to laugh and shared this with Manny, who laughed, and the tech, who looked at me a bit weird until I told her we had done fertility treatment to get pregnant and that I had done lots of follicle tracking scans. She tried to do it abdominally, but my bladder was completely empty, so she wound up having to ask me to remove my pants anyway. Ah, good old dildo cam – how I missed you! She had the screen angled towards her for about half a minute, but then she turned it around so we could see, saying that we didn’t have to be holding our breath.

I saw the heartbeat before she even pointed it out and I’ve never been happier or more relieved to see anything in my life. It was AMAZING! She then proceeded to give me a very thorough wanding, pointing out all sorts of things along the way – looking at both ovaries, my uterus, the baby’s arm and leg buds, the bones ossifying in its face, the developing brain. We got to see the baby moving around and gaze in wonder at the flickering heartbeat. She printed us out two pictures which I will try to scan and post a bit later. According to their calculations, I was 9w3d, and the baby was measuring 10w exactly, with a heartbeat of 176.

I then went out and waited some more – before they’d let me leave, I needed to see the OB on call. They did some blood work as I waited, but it was still nearly 3 hours between getting the u/s and seeing the doctor. However, the waiting was much easier knowing the baby was ok, and the OB was very nice. She explained that the scan showed I had a very small bleed under the placenta, and that while it could be risky if the bleed got bigger, it was not that  uncommon and would most likely resolve on its own. I was smiling to myself as I held back from saying, “Oh, a subchorionic hemorrhage, right, gotcha.” We bloggers are just so damned well-informed! She answered my questions and then told me that she was on call until 8 the next morning, so if anything else happened or I was concerned, I could call and speak to her directly. She, and everyone I dealt with in the hospital on Friday, was amazing, and I am so fortunate to have been so well cared for.

As we were seeing the baby, between little bouts of teariness from me, I was thinking about how this is my child, MY child, my CHILD. A child to whom I could one day relate this story about the first time we saw her. And how much joy we felt when we did.

I know we are a long way from holding this child in our arms, and I am not taking it for granted that we will. But the sense of connection I am starting to feel to this baby – it humbles me as it sweeps over me. I am grateful. I am in awe.