Five Weeks and Five Days
6:33 p.m. - 2005-03-07
First doctor checkup today.
They called me back, had me pee in a cup, and immediately took me into the ultrasound room. Alan took off work today so that he could go with me, and though I wasn't sure how far along I was, I'd been hoping that they would do an ultrasound and we'd be able to see something. Sure enough, the nurse showed us the yolk sac and the embryo, AND we saw the heart beat! It was just a little blip on a blurry radar screen, but it was there, and it excited us. She told us that the heart rate was normal (100 bpm) and calculated me to be five weeks and five days along. I know that that's not far at all, and that anything could still happen, but I'm keeping my fingers crossed that all goes smoothly.
After the ultrasound we went back out into the waiting room for another half-hour, and then the doctor called us back for a meeting. He took my family history, told us some stuff, then decided to do a physical. After the usual poking and prodding, I joined Alan in the office again. The doctor wrote me a script for prenatal vitamins, told me about some of the things that I could expect to happen (morning sickness, fatigue, etc.) and assured me that my not sleeping through the night is a very common occurrence. In fact, I might not sleep well for the rest of the pregnancy, and definitely won't be getting much sleep after the baby is born, so it looks like my blissful nights of dreaming are pretty much over for a few years.
I have to go back in two weeks for another ultrasound and more bloodwork (he didn't say that I'm classified as high risk, but I assume that may be the reason why). I'm glad--that'll be a short work week AND the baby should look more like a tadpole and less like an itty bitty blob.
I have an observation from the school board on Wednesday and I'm so not prepared. I still have to put half a month's worth of grades in my grade book and plan a lesson. Hopefully it'll go okay, but I'm not stressing too bad. I don't plan on going back after this summer anyway, though that's not exactly a reason to start slacking off. I'm still not sure about the insurance situation, and it's concerning me. I think that I'll qualify for Medicaid if I'm not working, and though I really don't like the idea, it's pretty much our only option if I want to be able to stay home with the baby for awhile.