Another big milestone moment today with my first obstetrician appointment complete. My GP referred me back to the same ObGyn that I saw prior to going to the fertility clinic. He sent the referral back in April on the same day as my second beta HCG, but since my RE would be following the pregnancy through the first trimester, the OB appointment wasn’t scheduled until June 29th. I remember at the time feeling like that was a long ways off. My husband was also counting down the days and really looking forward to another check on the little squirt. He met my at my office and we walked to the appointment together as it’s only a block away from where I work. How wonderful not to have to spend 4 hours in the car driving for each appointment.
The receptionist remembered me from when I was last there a year and a half ago and congratulated us on the pregnancy. I asked her to check my file for my RE’s discharge summary, but with the postal strike it hadn’t yet arrived so I quickly called the fertility clinic and had them fax a copy up.
She checked my address and other details and then took me off to the washroom to pee in a cup, and took the dreaded body weight measurements. When I came back my husband asked what they were testing my pee for. I told him that maybe they want to run their own pregnancy test to see if it’s really true. No, seriously there are proteins and infections they check for routinely.
It was a bit of a wait to see the Dr. DH picked up one of the baby care magazines while we waited. He later informed me all about newborn bathing techniques he read about -LOL.
The doctor was happy to see me back at his office, this time for exciting reasons. We got caught up to speed on all that had happened since we’d last seen each other -he patiently listened to my lengthly rendition. Whew, that took a while. He had a look over my RE’s notes and decided that he didn’t need to order any more blood work because it had already been done. He then asked what we were planning to do about the prenatal testing. This one always makes me nervous because I have strong feelings about the reasons we chose not to do any of the screening tests for Down Syndrome or other chromosomal issues. I explained our choice and the rationale, and to my surprise my OB said he agreed with our decision and probably would have suggested doing just what we had done.
He asked if we had any other questions, and the only one I could come up with was regarding when to finish work. He asked me what I was thinking and I told him 36 weeks because I could use up vacation hours and holiday closures to cover the month of December. My due date is new year’s eve. He seemed to think that plan would be just fine, and predicted that I’d most likely deliver early in the new year. He stressed that pregnancy is not a disease, and that from this point forward the risk of miscarriage is extremely low so even though it was so difficult to get pregnant, there should be no difference from any other run of the mill pregnancy. He said I can lift and do whatever physical activity I feel comfortable with.
The chit chat out of the way, he asked me to climb up on the table. How many times have I climbed aboard a gynecological table in the past few years? This time was different though because I was allowed to remain fully clothed. He took a quick blood pressure check -totally normal. Then he felt my tummy and found the top of my uterus -totally normal again. Next he asked if we’d like to hear the baby’s heartbeat, and of course we both did. For a moment that nervousness crept in and I worried that there would be no heartbeat found, but just then we heard the whoosh-whash whoosh-whash. He had to chase the baby around a little to get a full reading of the heart rate -160 beats per minute. Then between heart beats there was a loud thud noise. He giggled and told us we have a really active little one in there because that loud noise was a kick.
Lastly I had to schedule another appointment in a month’s time, and this would be the norm for the next few months. He’ll order the anatomical ultrasound at 19 weeks, and that would likely be the only one I’d need unless there is a specific reason to do subsequent ones.
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