Doctor's Appointment #1 of Many

Today was a big day for our young pregnancy; we had our first prenatal doctor's appointment. I was fortunate enough to be able to tag along and I was very glad that I did.

This appointment was an sonogram only... we only got to talk to the doctor for maybe one minute and that was only in passing. Apparently it's too soon to even ask any questions? That was one thing that frustrated me about the appointment. Jun and I went in with a long list of "first-timer" questions but really got nothing in return... but I digress... on with the appointment details!

Our baby is still very young, and as it turns out, even younger than we thought. Jun and I had tried calculating the baby's age by counting from her last period, and thought we had a pretty good estimate of being in our 8th week (6 week fetal age). Well, it turns out that since Jun's period is longer than the average lady's, she ovulated later and didn't get pregnant when we thought she did. In fact, it turns out that she got pregnant almost a week and a half later than we thought. This was apparent on our sonogram picture when the technician used her computer to measure Puff and found out he was quite a bit smaller than we thought he would be at this point. Not really a big deal, it just means that we aren't as far along as we thought and it pushed the due date back about a week longer than Jun and I had estimated on our own. (Doctor's Projected Due Date: April 7th, 2012)

It was really a neat experience to see our baby on the monitor. I hesitate to use the words "cute" or "precious", because it wasn't much more than a dot on the screen.

Probably the most special part of the appointment came when the technician found Puff's heartbeat. Jun and I weren't sure if we would be able to hear a heartbeat at this appointment, but we were presently surprised when the "wub-wub-wub" sound came out of the speakers. It was definitely a surreal experience for me, and I can't even imagine what Jun was feeling at the time. The technician used her tools to calculate the fetal heart rate at 113 bpm. This is apparently a little on the low side (normal is 120-160) but the technician said that it's probably because the baby isn't far enough along yet. We're supposed to go back in 2 weeks to have another sonogram and make sure then heart rate gets up to into the normal range.

After the sonogram experience, we went with a nurse to another room for Jun to get her blood drawn. Jun said later that the nurse "wiggled the needle around" in her arm and left her with a bruise and a sore arm.