Graduation Day

11 June 2011

It is said that it takes an entire village to raise a child, well, sometimes it takes a whole village just to create one. As I wrote out a thank you card to the staff at VFC that were involved in our care, I realized there were 12 people and each and every one of them played an important role in making this dream a reality.

Yesterday was our last appointment at the fertility clinic. It was a bit of a different ride down the Island, because instead of driving our car, we were in a rented moving truck. My brother needed help clearing out the furniture from his recently sold condo, so DH, my dad, and I piled in and off we went.

It was a bit tricky finding somewhere to park our big rig, but luckily the church parking lot a block away from the clinic was empty. My dad walked us to the door of the clinic, and I invited him to come along for the ultrasound, but then warned him that it was not the type that they put the little paddle on your tummy. Blush. He opted to go for a walk while we had our appointment.

My RE came into the room and said, "good to see you, you must be about 8 weeks along now." "No", I said, "I'm nearly 11 weeks." He glanced at my chart and said "10 weeks, 6 days -where does the time go." Ok, maybe for him it's flown by, but I've been feeling anxious about this ultrasound for a couple of weeks! Would everything be OK in there? What if they find no heartbeat, or that the baby stopped growing?

In went the wand and up came our baby on the screen. Mini-Silver was very active - wiggling around like crazy. We saw the hands waving several times and a few karate chop kicks. Dr. H commented on how we've got a real mover and shaker in there as he chased after the little being trying to get some measurements. This scan was very thorough. Dr. H took a lot of measurements, and pointed out all the body parts -legs, arms, eyes, nose mouth, hands, feet, heart, belly button and from the top down you could even see the two lobes of the brain! He turned on the sound so we could hear the heart beat again. Everything looked great and we have one very healthy little peanut in there. My cervix was nice and long and the fibroid is not causing any trouble, and the placenta was in a good location.

Afterwards in his office we discussed the transfer to my local OB. He asked me what we'd decided to do about the prenatal testing. We told him we'd thought long and hard about it and had decided not to do the NT scan, the IPS blood tests, or the amnio. He smiled and agreed that it likely wasn't necessary, and then sheepishly admitted that he already did the NT measurements during today's ultrasound and they looked just fine! Well there you go.

We've officially graduated from the clinic. It was odd not booking another appointment as we left. This was appointment #32 in just under a year and a half.
It's such, huge relief that another big hurdle has been cleared, and I feel so blessed to be so fortunate especially when I know there are so many who are still in the trenches.

My dad met up with us again, and we showed him the pictures. He thinks it's a boy! He'll have to wait until around New Years Eve to find out, because we are not planning to find out ahead of time. Oh yeah, my official due date is Dec 31st.

We got all of my brother's stuff moved, and that went smoothly too. I was chief door opener and elevator holder while my dad and DH moved all the stuff.

I'll be happy not to have to make that drive again, but I'll admit I shed a bit of a tear saying goodbye to the team of people that had been so good to us and a big part of our lives. I'm crying again just writing this out -I'll blame that on the hormones. Bye bye VFC village, hello new village that we are still piecing together and figuring out.