A bit of a scare...
We had...
(Okay. Up front, lemme say, there's a happy ending to the story.)
... a bit of a scare. Those of you familiar with Kelly's history know there are no guarantees with her pregnancy. So, when she started bleeding last night, heavier than her normal period would be, we were pretty sure she'd miscarried.
My job: Get us quickly-but-safely to the ER. The other drivers on the road might take issue with my definition of "safely", but I'm pretty sure most of them would forgive me if they knew *why* I was as impatient as I was...
We figured pretty quickly that we wouldn't know anything for sure until we got her an ultrasound to see if there was a heartbeat. We met several very nice nurses and a nice enough doctor, but it was almost three hours before we got to the ultrasound. By that time, Kelly's been crying off and on and talking about how if they need to do a D&C, she wants to be sedated, because she doesn't want to remember it.
Finally we got to ultrasound and the tech starts with the abdominal, and he seems oddly nonchalant when he tells us the fetus is 11 weeks, 5 days along. Then he starts setting up for the angle where he'll look for the heartbeat, and I'm holding my breath and Kelly's trying not to cry.
At first, I think I'm hallucinating, but I'd swear the legs moved. And then I'm trying not to say anything because I don't want to give Kelly false hope. But then the tech grunts like he's trying to get the angle right, when the baby ROLLS OVER! "OMIGOSH, is he really alive?" I ask, and the tech says "Oh. Yeah. He just won't hold still so I can get his heart rate." Then the baby rolled back towards us and waved.
I start crying from relief. Hadn't really realized I'd been holding it in. The tech thought I was going to hyperventilate. We spent a very happy half hour watching the baby move around, foiling the tech's attempts to get clear pictures. He's about as camera-shy as his mom. While his head-to-butt measurement puts him at 11 weeks 5 days, his femur length puts him at 13 weeks 4 days. Kelly's analysis is that he has long legs, like his daddy.
Two more hours of waiting for a radiologist to "read the ultrasound" -- essentially to double-check to make sure the ultrasound didn't show anything we need to worry about -- and then we were on our way home. The radiologist used the word "viable" several times, which in context, is a very very very good thing.
As scary as it was, this looks to be an isolated incident. We have a regularly-scheduled OB appointment on Tuesday, so we'll probably know a bit more then, but overall, things are good.
EDIT: It's still too early to discern gender. Kelly's got a hunch it's a boy, so we're saying "he" until we know. We don't have a gender preference, all we want is a healthy baby.
You can't really see it here, but he's got hands and feet and a face and everything.
EDIT: Here's a scan of that same picture. We saw more facial details on the live monitor, but hopefully you can see them a bit more clearly than you could above.
