Monday, February 16, 2009

Hearing and Seeing Our Baby


We had a great appointment with our midwife this morning. We knew we were going to hear the heartbeat today, so we were very excited! When we got into the exam room, DeEtte handed me a small rubber doll the size of a 12-week fetus so that we could envision how our baby looks. We were amazed that so much could fit into such a tiny package - about 2 inches. She then explained that it would take several minutes for her to find the heartbeat. She said we would hear two heartbeats - mine and the baby's - and told us how they sounded different. She found mine immediately, and within seconds found the baby's. It was loud and strong - we were so thrilled! She then searched around for other heartbeats (ha) but only found the one. Needless to say, this appointment renewed my strength to continue enduring all these funky pregnancy symptoms. Hearing the heartbeat really made the pregnancy real to us.


This afternoon, we had a free ultrasound scheduled with a clinic in Kinston. The clinic was training their nurses and offered these ultrasounds as part of the training (thanks for the info, Carrie!). We had a great experience! The exam room was very tiny and there were about 6 people poking and prodding me, but I'm not really modest so it wasn't a problem. They spent about 50 minutes with us as each nurse got a turn to examine the baby. They ended up doing a vaginal ultrasound since I'm so early in my pregnancy, and this made the pictures much better. We got another heartbeat reading, and they also measured the baby and determined that s/he is exactly 11 weeks. I really enjoyed hearing them talk about the baby and discuss what was happening inside of me. At one point the baby got really energetic and started turning flips and throwing his/her limbs out. The nurses got so excited and started calling in other clinic staff to come see. Fun times!


A little about our weekend to close...we had the pleasure of spending Valentine's Day with our good friends, Drew and Christie Shoaf. The Shoafs now live in Washingston (boo), but they were visiting family in North Carolina and stayed a night with us. Several other friends came over Saturday to see them, and we had the best time hanging out with everybody. We're all in baby mode (all the couples except for the Shoafs either have a newborn or are expecting) so the conversation was babies, babies, babies. We had such a great time (expect for when I lost my Valentine's dinner) but all in all it was a great day!

1 comment:

East Carolina In My Mind said...

Those are great pictures of your little one! That is so neat that you got a free ultrasound this early. The peeing symptom I think was the MOST annoying to me:(