So today we had our second visit with the midwife. We walked into our appointment and the lovely Lynnette was nowhere to be found – she was on holiday (the nerve!) so we had another midwife instead.
Everything seems to be going swimmingly; I had the results from the blood work I had done last time back – everything totally fine. I have no Rh D Positive antibodies, I don’t have Chlamydia (egads!), my blood sugar is 4.4 (apparently a good number), blood pressure normal... ooh! And I learned today I have ‘O positive’ blood. All the coolest people do, apparently. Urine sample normal... well, I say normal but there was nothing normal about trying to manoeuvre a stream of wee into a specimen (no coincidence it’s called speci-MEN; who are those things designed for? The clue is right there in the name!) anyway... I managed to capture a few drops and it all looks okay.
Hmm... Maybe that’s the secret to my riches – invent a chick friendly pee sample bottle! I’d call it the ShePee.
Up onto the examination table I go, for the midwife to have a bit of a poke and prod of my belly. We established that the top of my uterus is just beneath my belly button. There was also a student midwife there, job shadowing I suppose... and she had a bit of a feel – one uterus, present and correct.
And then my favourite bit – we got to hear the baby’s heartbeat for the first time. It was a bit of a wriggler today but eventually its heartbeat was located... music to my ears. I’ll never get bored of hearing that sound – I looked over at Jason as we listened to our little brand new dude/dudette thumping away. It was a handsome heartbeat, lemme tell ya. Strong, true and steady. Indescribable.
I said to the midwife, ‘Now, does that sound like a girl baby heartbeat or a boy baby heartbeat to you?’
She said, ‘Do you want my professional opinion?’
We said, ‘Hell, yeah we do!’ (Actually, we didn’t but you know what I mean.)
‘That, ‘ she said, with the air of a decidedly confident woman-in-the-know, ‘Is a boy baby heartbeat.’
‘AGGGGH!’ I said, ‘I’m officially outnumbered, then.’ I got up from the table and joined Jason on the seats across the room. ‘Even our cat is a boy!’
I’m not going to lie to you; I think it would be nice if we had a girl, because we’ve already got a boy. But it’s not like I’m not going to love it just because it might turn out to be a boy! We Proctors make really, REALLY cool babies, and regardless of the presence or absence of dangly bits down below, I can’t wait to meet our little creation. Whatever we get, I’ll be over the moon.
After that, we went down the corridor to the nurse who took some blood – ow, she was hurty! Anyway; this time I had some blood tests to screen for Down’s Syndrome. They are optional tests, and they use biochemical markers in your blood, and look at my age and weight to work out the risk of the baby being born with Downs Syndrome. I had one with Ben so I thought I may as well have one with this baby. It’s just an early indicator; nothing can be certain but at least it’s not as invasive and scary as the REAL test for Downs, which is an amniocentesis (aka big fat needle into your belly to extract amniotic fluid from around the baby.) GAH! No way. Anyway – I’m not in a high-risk category for it anyway, as I’m still young (ish), so hopefully there is nothing to worry about.
So that was this week! Next midwife appointment is 8 weeks away, but our next ultrasound is only 6 weeks away so we’ve got that to look forward to. This next ultrasound is the one where we could find out the sex IF JASON’S MIND CAN BE CONVINCED THAT IT’S A GOOD IDEA. Ha ha... he doesn’t want to find out. I kind of do; just so I could start getting prepared... but I’m not going to twist his arm; I’m not that precious about finding out so we’ll just see what happens. Maybe, just maybe, he’ll have a change of heart. Stranger things have happened!
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