are you serious, something is IN there?

Did you know that you can’t visit or choose an OB until you’re 8 weeks along? Crazy right?? I didn’t know that either or at least none of my pregnant friends told me. So when I called at 4 weeks, I was told I had to make my first prenatal appointment 4 weeks out so that when I arrived I would be 8 weeks along. That felt like FOREVER but we made it. We decided to do some research on where to have this peanut and chose to have our baby at Sutter Roseville Hospital, a fabulous facility just down the street from where we work and not too far from where we’ll hopefully live.

Through our screenings and searches I decided to go with Dr. N (privacy purposes people). We met her on December 27th at our first pre-natal appointment. She asked us a TON of medical history questions of both Gregg and me and thankfully answered quite a few of our own. She also prescribed a nausea medication which I was so thankful for and told me that I was ready to get my first ultrasound and blood work next week. Our appointment was set for January 4th at 8:15am. We would finally see our baby and fingers crossed see a heartbeat.

first prenatal appointment

The morning of our first ultrasound I was nervous. I had simple instructions, start drinking 32 ounces of water at 7am and come with a full bladder. I’m sorry what, a full bladder…no no no! I have to admit the days or even the minutes leading up to this day were super nerve wracking. What if there wasn’t a baby in there? Or no heartbeat? Or worse? To be honest I was really scared and so was Gregg.

I managed to get almost all of my water down with big gulps and Gregg made me 2 eggs with cheese to help me get ‘thirsty’ to drink more. We got there nice and early when the imaging center opened, checked in and then we waited. Waiting to be called back into your first ultrasound is truly one of the most nerve wracking moments of this entire pregnancy. I guess it’s because all this time you’ve been having symptoms and reading books and seeing positive stick/s and taken blood tests but you haven’t visually seen anything.

When I was finally called back to the room, I hurried in and Gregg followed. By this time my bladder was insanely full, just walking to the room was difficult. She told me lie down and I said “just to triple check, I can’t go to the bathroom right” and she laughed and said “no”. She then said she would look at the ultrasound pictures first and then she would turn the monitor around to show me when she was finished. Of course Gregg got to stand and see the whole thing (so unfair) so while I was trying to concentrate on holding my bladder I was also watching Gregg’s face to see any sort of good or bad expression. He was worrying me because he wasn’t smiling nor was he frowning he was just concentrating….so instead I just kept looking up and said a few silent prayers and after what felt like 10 years, she turned the monitor around to show us out peanut.
The feeling was indescribable. There was SERIOUSLY A BABY GROWING IN MY TUMMY!!! Even better we saw it wiggle a little bit and you could make out the forming of arms, legs and best of all a beautiful little fast flicker of a heartbeat. We were both so teary and just kept saying “wow”. With a CD of both pictures and video we were on our way to work, smiles and all. Today marks the day of how much we truly love this little being we’ve created….to visually see this peanut is the most amazing feeling and we are so thankful for where we are in this journey so far. And let’s be honest, we’ve already re-watched the video at least 10 times today.

just to confirm this is ONE baby, 4 different pictures, not quadruplets :)

The Friday following we got a call from our OB saying that she received our ultrasound results and things looked perfect. Right on schedule with a strong heartbeat and size. Music to a new mother’s ears! She said that we’re in the 90th percentile to be ‘sharing’ our news, meaning we were 90% to be in the clear that things would be ok (aka out of the woods!)