My very first pregnancy appointment & ultrasound!

Yesterday was my very first pregnancy appointment and ultrasound!  I was 8 weeks and 2 days.  They said to expect the appointment to last 2 1/2 hours, so I took the day off from work.  DH took off from his morning job as well to be able to come with me.

First they took my weight and blood pressure (I've gained 5 lbs already and blood pressure was 110/62), followed by a nurse asking me ALL of the exact same questions that I filled out on the medical history forms they mailed me after I called about my pregnancy.  She said the reason why she had to do that was because most people aren't really thinking about it seriously when they're filling it out, and then they suddenly remember something that they didn't put down on the form.

One of the big things the nurse said they're going to do is to check and see if I have an immunity to chicken pox.  Both of my sisters had it at separate times when we were kids, and I never caught it from either of them.  I finally got the vaccination when I was 13, but I never got a booster shot when I was 23 because that's when we started TTC.  The other big thing is DH has a genetic blood disorder called HHT.  HHT is a disorder that causes abnormalities of blood vessels.  It basically means that DH gets a lot of nose bleeds that take a long time to stop, and he can't take ibuprofen.  Sometimes it's his lip if it's super cracked.  He's never been officially tested for it, but he has family members who have.  The doc said that it shouldn't affect the pregnancy since I'm not the one with bleeding problems.

I also asked the nurse about exercise.  All the information that the office gave me said to not let my heart rate go over 140 when exercising.  However, when I wore a heart rate monitor at the gym on Thursday, I barely broke a sweat trying to keep my heart rate between 140 and 145 for 45 minutes.  It was not a good workout at all.  She said that I shouldn't go above 140 because then there is less blood flow to my uterus, which isn't good for the baby.

After the long round of questions, the nurse gave us a ton of freebie reading material, and we went to a sub-waiting room for a 1/2 hour till the doc was ready.

Once we saw the doc, I asked her the same question about exercise.  She said if you go by the books, it's 140.  She also said that it's a number that was made up by a patriarchal medical society over 40 years ago, and there's not a whole lot of research to back it up.  She told me about a couple of marathon runners who, when they were pregnant, had to "back off" to a 6 minute mile because pregnancy slowed them down a bit.  I can't imagine going "down" to a 6 minute mile!  My personal best is 7:37.  Anyway, she said that if I was overweight and not active at all, 140 would be the number.  However, since I am active, she's okay with me going higher as long as I can be aware of how my body is doing.  I was so delighted to hear this!  (Side note: I told my mom about this later, and she told me that I shouldn't go over 140.  I'm like, Mom--you're not a medical professional, and you're only basing this off of feeling because you're being a worry wart.  I'm healthy!  She told me she wasn't happy with it, but agreed to drop the subject since I asked).

After that, the doc did a pap smear since my last one was 9 months ago, and I can't have it done later in pregnancy.  She gave me a pad afterward, saying that my cervix was super sensitive and will bleed for a while and to not be alarmed because the blood is coming from me, not the baby.  That was good to know.

Finally came the ultrasound!  This all happened in the span of 10 seconds, but it felt like an ETERNITY to me.  Here's what she did followed by my thoughts (in italics):

Doc: Here's your uterus.

Me: Where's the baby?!

Doc: Here's the sac (black on the screen).

Me: WHERE'S THE BABY?!?!?!?!  Oh my gosh, it's not there.  I've got an empty sac with no baby.

Doc: And here's your baby!

I'm speechless.  There in the middle of the screen is a little peanut with a beating heart.  I can even see the valves opening and closing!  The doc measures the peanut.  She's (I'm using the pronoun "she" instead of "it", and it's not because I have a feeling that she's a girl because I don't care either way) 16.3 mm long, and the heart rate is 163 bpm.  I can remember those numbers because they're exactly the same :)  The baby measured at exactly 8 weeks, even though I'm 8 weeks 2 days.  Doc said that they'll still keep the same due date, October 5th, unless the measurements put the date off by more than a week.

Apparently I conceived with the follicle on my left ovary, which was the smaller of the 2 from my ultrasound on CD 14 (right ovary had a 19 mm follicle and left ovary had a 15 mm follicle).  If I had to guess, I would've said I conceived with the one on the right ovary since it was bigger.  But the corpus luteum is on my left ovary!  However, my right ovary had a cyst on it, left over from me taking Clomiphene.  Doc said it should go away by 20 weeks.  I'm hoping she's right.

Doc showed me the baby one last time before turning off the monitor.  It was so surreal.  I can't even feel it, but there's a growing life inside of me.  After the doc left the room, DH and I embraced.  We finally have a baby.  There are no words for that kind of happiness.

After leaving the ultrasound room, I go see the lab tech to get 4 vials of blood taken for testing.  The tech told me that if I don't hear back from them, no news is good news.  My next appointment is on March 23rd (12 weeks).  They'll only listen for the heart beat with a probe, so no ultrasound on that day.

I'll try and add the ultrasound picture later.  I haven't figured out how to hook up the scanner to the laptop and make it work correctly (only works with the desktop for now).

Thanks to everyone for all your prayers!

UPDATE:  I finally got the pictures uploaded!

16.3 mm & measuring at 8w0d

heart rate is 163bpm