A Roller Coaster Ride of a Day!

Today was a scary day. I woke up at almost 5 am to some bleeding. Bleeding is easily a pregnant woman's worst nightmare. I was instantly in tears as I woke Nick up and broke the news. I was sure I was having a miscarriage. But the bleeding stopped very quickly and I spent the next few hours sitting in bed feeling extremely stressed and anxious. It was really really terrible. We went to the Genetic counsellor for our session to talk about appropriate testing. It was SO hard sitting there knowing that the only thing in the world i wanted to the ultrasound. I wanted to know if the baby was ok or not and start dealing with it. The waiting was awful

Like a good girl, I sat there drinking my water in preparation for the ultrasound. By the time we left the counseling session I thought my bladder was going to explode (for those of you who haven't experienced the joy of the ultrasound yet, they want you to have a full bladder to help them see things more easily and push the uterus out). By the time they called me in, I was so ready to blow I almost danced with joy. But before there was any relief - she had to have a look around and she couldn't find what she needed to find. I almost cried. Everything inside me just wanted to curl up in a ball and be miserable. She went to get something from the other room and told me I could FINALLY pee. YAY! When she came back in (me feeling slightly better)....she found the baby right away and the little bugger was JUST FINE.

He/she was dancing away in my tummy and the truth came out that sometimes when mommy uses the bathroom, it wakes the little fetus up and that is what she was hoping for - some movement. So the little alien was moving and shaking in there. A lot of jerky movements that looked like hiccups. Then we saw his/her little heart fluttering and the technician turned on the speakers and we heard the best sound ever - a nice, strong, 164 BPM heartbeat.

The relief and joy that ran through my system was electric. I wouldn't stop the tears of relief. I was SO happy to know that the baby was ok.

These ultrasounds aren't as clear, and I had to use some unusual methods to get these onto the blog, but take a look:

In this one, you can see a face in the left corner of the ultrasound. It looks like an alien - but it is MY alien!


Here are a couple of profile shots, you can see a big fat head in the right hand corner:




And finally, this one is upside down because I think it is easiest to see this way, but along the bottom you can see a very defined spine:


So I'm happy at the end of the day to say that it looks like the baby is doing ok. I'm still a small ball of nerves wondering why there was bleeding and how much I have to worry...but I think it is a good sign that we have made it successfully to week 12 (as of today) and there was a healthy heartbeating. The doctor doesn't seem worried so I will try not to be worried. But it is hard to not be concerned about something so precious.

I can tell you that my back is killing me so I am going to post this blog and go lie down in the most comfortable position and just relax for the rest of the evening!