Today we had our first doctor visit. Tiffany was nervous, she of course was the one who was to be poked and prodded while my main job was to accept congratulations from the doctor after hearing we had only been trying to get pregnant for two months...Thank you, thank you very much. But I suppose some credit should go to whoever came up with the ovulation calculator “app” as we followed that to a T and boom...baby is made. But I digress.
Believe it or not, even as a 30-year old male, this was my first visit to a OBGYN office. Shocker, I know. Up until today the only thing I knew about Tiffany’s OBGYN was that you had to make an appointment like 6 months in advance for her yearly checkup. Well, I could see why today. This waiting room was flush with pregnant women when we got there at 9:15 as well as when we left a little over and hour later.
Our appointment was at 9:30 and after filling out a brief questionnaire, we were taken to the doctor’s office. BTW, one of the questions on this brief “survey” was, “Are you related to the father, i.e. cousin etc.?” (Insert your own crude joke here).
Tiffany’s regular doctor is on vacation so we saw the nurse practitionor and she asked us some more questions and took a brief family history. She also told us the various tests that can be conducted, testing for different ailments raging from breathing conditions to “chromosome issues”. The theory being that you could terminate the pregnancy if you find out that your child has a debilitating disease. We won’t bother with those tests since we would never terminate the pregnancy, but she did advise us on one so we can alert the pediatrician if the baby does have a condition that should be treated right after birth, but I guess we’ll address that later.
For today, we were to have our first ultrasound. We were also given a preliminary due date (Dec. 29). After some more valuable tidbits of information that was pretty valuable, foods to avoid, exercise recommendations etc., the nurse practitioner said that the first ultrasound would be (a word my wife has banned me from using)...I heard this and thought, “Wait, that doesn’t sound like gooing up a belly and running a stick with a globe over it.” Tiffany didn’t seemed phased so I didn’t find it important to have the nurse practitioner explain, who probably says a variation of that word more times in a day than I have in my life.
She showed us the exam room and Tiffany prepared herself for the exam and she waited for the nurse practitioner to leave the room at which time she asked me, “What does (the word) mean?”
My response....”I thought you knew”. In reality, I think we both knew what it meant, but didn’t want to say it out loud. Suffice it to say, this ultrasound involved a wand with some jelly on it, but it didn’t go on the OUTSIDE of the belly which you've found out if you took the time to click on the above link.
Soon enough, there was Tiffany’s uterus in living....black and white. And then things got interesting. The ultrasound confirmed Tiffany was pregnant, but the embryo was not visible in the uterus. At 6 weeks, and this is how far along we thought she was, you should see the embryo. The nurse practitioner wasn’t overly concerned but did want a blood sample to check TIffany’s hormone levels, supposedly they double every day or so. She said, most likely, Tiffany is not as far along as we had thought. I wasn’t really worried. To me, it made sense. The test was negative at what should have been two days late and was still faint at six days late. We’ll know the blood work results Monday so we have the weekend to tell Tiff’s parents and also worry that something is a miss. I’m not worried, but I know how my wife is so the next two days should be both exciting (when we share the news) and stressful as we wait for the test results. For now, she’s scheduled to go back Wednesday for another ultrasound....
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