18 Week Appointment

We had an interesting appointment yesterday, to say the least. After checking in at 9:15 for our 9:20 appointment, we sat in the waiting room until almost 10:00. Once the nurse finally called our names, she explained that one of the doctors had been called out for a delivery and the other doctor was handling both case loads. The way the practice works, we alternate doctors each visit so that we know them both and are comfortable with either one doing the delivery – so it wasn’t a stranger. Still – odd that they didn’t notify us when we signed in like they normally do.

Once we were called in to the nurse’s station, the strangest thing happened. The scale was wrong! Oh, wait… no. Unfortunately it was right. But I’m not doing too bad. I think I’ve gained about 9 pounds at this point. But why do the doctor’s office scales always read higher than the scale at home? I’m not changing mine. Theirs is wrong.

Anyways, when they took my blood pressure the machine malfunctioned. Isn’t that weird? I mean, I could see the cheapie ones that we have at home malfunctioning, but I don’t expect that at the doctor’s office. The second time she took it, she got a good reading. “Very good,” in her words. BP – 119/78. Thank goodness Andy has a good memory because I just had to email him for the reading - I couldn’t remember.

Next was the urine sample. They make you leave one at every appointment. As I’m sure you well know, that requires peeing in a cup – which is not so hard when you can see the cup. With an increasingly protruding belly, however, this task gets more and more difficult to maneuver. This is the first time I’ve had a hard time and I’m sure it’s just going to get worse.

Next we were escorted to the room. We got the bigger room at the end. I love the room at the end! That’s where the ultrasound machine is. When we go to the other rooms, the doctor just uses a little hand-held Doppler to listen to the heart beat. It’s still neat and amazing, but I love seeing the baby so much more! We were not scheduled for an ultrasound, so when I got in there, Andy and I were looking around for the Doppler that the nurse usually leaves on the counter. No Doppler! Maybe she’s going to use the ultrasound machine?? Sure, enough…

The doctor was in a hurry with such a heavy case load, so she went straight for the ultrasound machine. She was listening for the heartbeat only, so she blew that up on the screen. Healthy, quick beat… music to our ears. I don’t know why, but my breath always catches a little bit right before I hear it. For a moment, I fear that the sound won’t be there. But God is good and it was there. So was a little picture-in-picture of our little baby! I could see it moving – even in that tiny little picture. I tried to hint by asking the doctor if that was the baby (duh!!) and she obliged by making the picture larger. She seemed to be having fun as she moved the handheld device around looking at the (big) head, the curve of the body under the neck and then the two little legs sticking straight up in the air. Full view.

“Do you want to know what you’re having?”

“Yes! We’re dying to know!!”

“Don’t take my word for it… this is not my specialty, but I will tell you what I think I see.”

“Yes, please!”

“What do you want it to be?”

“We’re hoping for a boy, but will be thrilled no matter what – we just want to know…”

Then she told us what she thought. But Andy made me promise not to tell until the “official” ruling next week. The doctor was really not confident and told us not to go out and start buying anything in gender specific colors – she could be wrong and the ultrasound tech is much better at it than she is. With that said, we don’t want to make an announcement and then retract it later. So we wait… it’s going to be a long weekend! Those that know me know that I have a hard time keeping my mouth shut – I’m already going crazy.

Before the doctor left, I asked about travel. We booked tickets to go to Colorado at Christmas time about a month ago. I did this after much online research suggesting that most doctors recommend no flying after 36 weeks. I’ll be way less than that ("way" meaning three weeks, as Becky pointed out), so it shouldn’t be a problem… right? Wrong. Dr. Gamm was not on board. She said that they recommend no flying after 32 weeks. She left it up to us to make the decision, but notified us that flying any time after 32 weeks can induce pre-term labor. Great…

The last thing was the blood test. For some reason the nurse had a really hard time drawing my blood. Blood drives usually love me because I’m so easy to draw blood from – I’m usually up and off the table in a fraction of the time of everyone else. Not so yesterday. She couldn’t find a vein in my right arm, so she had to go to the left (after removing the needle from my right, ofcourse). Even there she couldn’t get the needle into the vein to just draw one full tube of blood. It was strange. Finally, after several minutes of pulling the needle in and out, she had enough in the tube to test – even if it wasn’t full.

The reason for drawing the blood was to do the screenings for birth defects like down syndrome. I haven’t really worried about anything like that until they did the test for it. Now it occupies my thoughts a little… I know that God will give us exactly what we need and in no way would it affect our love for the baby if something was wrong, but we are definitely praying for a healthy baby and there is a slight awkwardness in waiting for those test results.

“How long until we find out the results?”

“Just three to four weeks – we’ll tell you at your next OB appointment.”

Oi…