A Due Date and Nickname for Baby! (Friday, 17 November 2006)

Today we visited a radiologist to get the trans-vaginal ultrasound. Trans-vaginal scans are usually prescribed for early pregnancies or to diagnose ectopic pregnancies, tumors or cysts.

After inserting a large probe (easier than expected), we all watched the screen. The screen looked like a TV with bad reception -- a lot of snow. At least one or two minutes ticked by and neither the Doctor nor nurse showed any expression or said anything as they watched, so I started to worry.

Me: "Is it ectopic?"

Dr. S: “Are we LOOKING for an ectopic pregnancy??”

Me: "I don't think so..."

Dr. S: “Women these days! They get pregnant, read books and horror stories on the internet, and before they’ve had their first formal doctor visit, they’ve prepared themselves for every disaster! Millions of women get pregnant every year. It’s a perfectly normal process and there is no reason to assume the worst!”

Moments later a picture came into view and we were surprised to see what looked a black bubble with a 'bean' inside that had a large head and four appendages – little arms and legs! Dr. S said “There is the baby, and there is the heart beating!”. I felt such overwhelming relief that there was really a baby there, I started to cry and found it difficult to continue looking at the screen. This was the first time since we discovered I'm pregnant that we could see the baby and hear it, so it is starting to feel real.

Dr. Subramanyam activated a ruler on the screen to take measurements of the fetus, and indicated we were 10 weeks along. The due date is listed as June 15, 2007.

This surprise ranks second only to discovering the pregnancy last week. Within a few seconds of receiving this news, we realize I have been pregnant since slightly before our wedding in September. Immediately, I started reeling through the things I'd done since September and October that I wouldn't have done if I'd known I was pregnant: drank at the wedding, drank a bit over the honeymoon, took a fair amount of flu medicine/decongestant in Sydney in order to clear my ears for the flights back to the U.S....etc. These got filed in my head as things to raise with a doctor as soon as we find one.

The doctor gave us a print of the sonogram. Our first baby picture!
Nickname for baby is ‘Bean’ (aka 'the bean'), and 'it' looks like E.T.

Pictures: me at 10 weeks; sonogram of the Bean at 10 weeks