Saturday, June 12, 2010

First Ultrasound

Just over a week ago, on June 4th, we had our first ultrasound at the fertility clinic.

The ultrasound confirmed the pregnancy. An ultrasound tech was in the room with us, and afterwards one of the clinic's doctors met with us to discuss the results. It was a little bit difficult trying to figure out what everything was on the ultrasound. I knew I wasn't really supposed to, but I did ask the tech a few questions. I could tell where the embryo was and, when the view was correct, I could see the heartbeat. (I confirmed with the tech that that's what I was seeing.) Seeing the heartbeat made me tear up a little bit. I felt a little bit bad that Jen wasn't able to see it at the same time as me, but later on the ultrasound tech moved the screen so that she could see too. The tech didn't print an image for us. She seemed to think we'd be back soon-ish and that a picture of what we saw that day wouldn't really be as interesting as one from a few weeks down the line.

The doctor told us that the ultrasound indicated a healthy, low-risk pregnancy. The embryo is implanted in a good place (i.e. it is not an ectopic pregnancy). The heartrate was supposed to be over 110bpm, and was 140. And the size, 1.17cm, indicated that the embryo was 7w2d old. (A little different from our other calculations, but for now, we am sticking with our original age and due date predictions, just for simplicity's sake.) The doctor said that since everything looked good he was okay with not seeing us again, but that if we wanted to we could always book another ultrasound or appointment. We have our first appointment with our midwife at the end of June, so decided we wouldn't make any other appointments at the clinic unless we became concerned about something and wanted to come in to make sure everything was okay.

Since the ultrasound we have told many more people about the pregnancy.

Before the people who knew were:
-my in-laws
-my twin sister
-my best friend (who was visiting us when we took the positive home test)
-our friend, who we had considered as a donor
-Jen's old co-worker/close friend
-one of my co-workers, and later my boss
-two of Jen's co-workers, and later her boss and his wife
-some friends and the owner of the martial arts gym where Jen instructs and I train
(Goodness! That seems like a lot of people!)

Now we've told:
-my mom, dad, brother, Nana, and two cousins
-the rest of my co-workers

We will tell the rest of Jen's family when we go down to visit them at the end of the month. Following that we'll probably tell everyone. We should be at about 12 weeks by then, which seems like a good time to start sharing the news with anyone who doesn't already know.

The past few weeks we've been spending a good bit of time looking through "The Pregnancy Bible", which we bought around the time we started trying to conceive, and "The Pregnancy Journal" which Jen's old co-worker sent to us when she found out we were pregnant. We've also signed up for weekly email updates from babycentre.ca that show what's happening each week. All three have been great resources.

Oh, and finally, we've started calling our baby "The Bean", or just "Bean" for short.

We're feeling pretty good around here. (Minus Jen's constantly queasy stomach, but I'll save talking about that for another time, perhaps.)