From panic to bliss in 3 minutes flat.

I FINALLY had a prenatal appointment yesterday. It feels like forever since I'd been in for one, and in reality it had only been, like, 5 weeks. But lately I've been feeling so NOT pregnant that I'd been counting the hours until I could hear the heartbeat.

And then the doctor couldn't find it.

She's all calm, shoving the little doppler thingie around and explaining the sounds we're hearing, though all I'm thinking is "Yes, but it's NOT THE HEARTBEAT." Finally after a couple minutes she says, "Well, I think we ought to try an ultrasound."

*Panic*

See, in the past, getting an ultrasound has meant getting a script from her, and then either making an appointment (as though there's any way I'm going to mentally last another 24 hours, much less 2 or 3 or 4 days depending on how busy the ultrasound office is) or going to the ER and weathering THAT environment for however long it takes for someone to spare five minutes to check you out. But then she said she'd finally gotten an ultrasound machine, so we could just hop over to the other room and take a look-see. Hallelujah! And what did we see?

A head, a spine, a hand, two thigh bones, and a heart beating around 140! Now obviously those aren't the only bits and pieces the kid has so far, it's just that, given its position (which was squished up to the top of the uterus, which is why Dr. Robinson couldn't find it) things were a little hard to see. Plus, at 14 weeks, the baby is just a wee thing of 3 or 4 inches, so it's hard to see much else anyway. But it kicked and squirmed away from the pressure of the ultrasound thingie, and we just sat and looked at the heart doing its thing for a few minutes. Lovely.

So I went from not only total panic but also from a sense of disconnect from this pregnancy to feeling very much the expectant mom again. Dan and I talked on the way home about how neither of us has much of a sense of what the sex might be, whereas the first time around we had such definite (and right on!) impressions, but I wonder if, now that I've seen it, I'll start to bond more. Regardless, I'm just relieved to know that all is well. :)