Pregnancy test, you ask? YES, I say. I realize that I’ve taken sixteen, give or take, since early September, that they’ve all been varying shades of positive, and that all the logic and reason I’m able to muster these days (not to mention friends and spouse and People Who Make Sense) tell me “You’re pregnant, weirdo. Stop testing.” But yesterday was my first appointment, and the morning hours found me utterly at loose ends, and it was just a dollar anyway for a little piece of peace of mind. It was blazingly positive, if you’re wondering. If I didn’t know better, I’d say that stick was taunting me. Jerk.
Part of my anxiety was rooted in the fact that I did something ill-advised for those of us who are generally sweepingly anxious as a rule. I rented a home fetal doppler and tried (in vain) to find Baby’s heartbeat myself. I found mine about five thousand times over until I began cursing its reliability, which is pretty self-defeatist, in retrospect. But I didn’t find BB’s, and that scared me but good. Because, you see, it is VERY difficult to find the heartbeat before 10 weeks anyway, and I started trying at 8 weeks. Why? Just to freak myself out, maybe. Maybe life had been altogether too free of gut-wrenching worry for my taste. Who knows what motivates an incurable neurotic?
So thus was my state of mind going into the doctor’s appointment yesterday. I didn’t know what to expect. I have a new OB since Alex, and a new practice and a new hospital. My old doctor was stingy with ultrasounds. I only got one, and it was at 20 weeks. I did have a nurse friend who snuck me in for a quick peek at 10 weeks, so I knew Alex was IN there at least. With BB, yesterday, all I knew was that all pregnancy tests the world over insist the same thing, but that I was not going to be satisfied until I saw or heard for myself that there was a beating heart or three. So when they called me back and took me and Steven into an ultrasound room, I had to stop myself from throwing my arms around the nurse. No need to scare anyone. And it happened fast, the transition from dark uncertainty to crushing relief. It happened the second the nurse turned the monitor in our direction and I sat up on my elbows and saw our baby. Moving, no less, and looking much like a little gummy bear with stubby arms and legs. Blurry here, but you get the idea. But the best part? The crazy-fast flutter in the middle, the heartbeat, strong and vital, 180 beats per minute.
“Wow,” said Steven, my man of few words, and that just about summed it up for me, too.
Last night, after Alex was in bed and we were sitting on the couch trying to find something watchable on TV, Steven took another look at the sonogram pictures. “It’s weird to know what this is going to grow into,” he said. “That it’ll be funny and crazy and we’ll laugh at it and yell at it...”
“And love it,” I thought but didn’t say because it would’ve sounded cheesy. Then again, future tense doesn't apply here; the love switch has already been flipped. I sensed it before I saw that flutter on the screen; I knew it after.
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