One Beautiful Little Heartbeat!

What an amazing, beautiful, incredible gift from God! Our little baby, only 6 weeks-5 days old, has a strong little heartbeat and we got to hear it!!

Our ultrasound girl knew how nervous we were (she was the same one that did some of our fertility ultrasounds) and promised us she would tell us the second she saw the heartbeat! She skipped the abdominal and went straight for the transvag (thank God!) so we didn't have to have even one second of worrying. I started praying a Hail Mary as soon as she began but only got to the words "full of grace" before I heard the words I will never forget: "I see it and there's a heartbeat." It took me a long time to see it, but I was so comforted by those words that I didn't care. Ted and I both got to see and hear the little thing. It was so wonderful. I could have listened to it all day.

Here are some pictures of our precious little miracle.

This one is showing the heartbeat. 122 beats per minute. Some estimates I read said it should be between 90-110. Our doctor said 110-160. Either way-it's just fine!

This one shows the baby and the yolk sac. The arrow is pointing to the baby. The yolk sac is the circle in the upper left. We could just barely see a little fluttering. It looked more like the ultrasound girl had an unsteady hand and was just moving the probe.

The two lines are the baby's height and width. If you draw a circle around the cross-that's our baby! He's measuring 6 weeks-3 days, two days behind schedule. That's still within range so we're right on track!

I couldn't pass up an opportunity to take my first picture with the baby!

Here's a video of the heartbeat! Turn your speakers up loud to hear it and click the bottom right corner to make it full-screen. At the very end of the video you can hear me say "awesome". That word didn't even begin to describe how "awesome" the whole experience was!

We met our new doctor, Dr. B, for the first time. He's really young, just a year out of school. VERY nice and easy to talk to. The appointment probably lasted a half hour, which impressed me. He made a joke about having heard about me before. I guess I have a reputation for being.....assertive. Yes, we'll go with assertive. I just smiled and said, "yep-you're the lucky one that gets to work with me!" Ha!  He let me ask as many questions as I wanted and didn't rush us at all. He said he's delivered about 80% of his patients' babies (the others were an on-call doctor) and that his C-section rate is only about 10-12%. He doesn't do episiotomies and has not yet had to use forceps or a vacuum.

He wasn't concerned about my racing heartbeat, as long as it doesn't get more frequent or start lasting a long time. He was somewhat concerned with my difficulty breathing. I have a history of strange, undiagnosed breathing issues and have had very bad respiration recoveries every time I've been under anesthesia. He suggested an appointment with a pulmonologist and I happily agreed. All in all, I'm really happy with him.

I had to chuckle when he said, "everything looks great, but you may want to hold off on telling everyone until about 12 weeks, then you'll really be in the clear."  It doesn't get more 'everyone' than a blog and facebook! There's just no way I could keep this miracle a secret!

Thank you, Lord, for our baby's heartbeat. Keep it pumpin'!