First Ultrasound

I left school early today (after classes, but before the end of the "teacher day"), so that we could get to Woodbury in time. I had my second blood draw (they're comparing it to the first to see if my hCG is increasing), then the lady pointed us in the direction of radiology.

Our appointment was at 3:30pm, but I don't think we got called back until 3:50pm. Lindsey, an u/s tech brought us back to the exam room. I was told to come with a full bladder, something that I was never told with Danni. (For those of you that aren't sure if you need a full or empty bladder at an u/s, here's the deal... If you're not very far along (like me this time... only 6 weeks), they want you to have a full bladder so that it raises your uterus up so that they can hopefully see it with an abdominal scan.)

So Lindsey first did an abdominal scan. She found that my uterus is retroverted (tipped towards my back instead of my front). It's not a big deal, she said that sometimes they'll flip back and forth at this point, but it makes things just slightly harder to see. She could still see the baby and the yolk sac (feeds the baby until the placenta is formed). When she looked at the baby, she could see the teeny-tiny little heart flutter! The baby is okay. Of course at this point, there's no way of telling if the heart is formed properly, because for one, the baby is so small (about 1/8 of an inch), and two, the heart isn't fully formed yet.


Since I was at Woodwinds hospital, they require that she check everything. So she had to check my ovaries and measure them and check and measure my uterus and some other stuff. Then she asked me to go to the bathroom (so I would have an empty bladder), and then she would do an internal u/s.

With the internal, she checked the baby again, and we could see it a lot closer up and in slightly more detail (it still looked like a little gray ball). We could see the heart beating away again, but a little closer up. Again, she check my ovaries, and whatever, which all checked out fine.


I don't remember which part it was during, but she found the heart rate of the baby. (Which I can barely see how she could find it with how tiny it is... when they found it with Danni, it was larger and much easier to see). When I asked Adam if he remembered the heart rate he said 140 bpm, because he thought it was about was Danni's was the first time we heard her heart beat (hers was actually 150 bpm). But I thought she had said 124 bpm. So as far as trying to predict a gender at this point, we've got nothing. (They say over 140 bpm is a girl, but under is a boy). If I'm right, maybe we're having a boy. If he's right, it could go either way. I am going to try to get a hold of Elizabeth, the midwife, to see if it's recorded somewhere.

She had also taken several measurements of the baby to see how far along we are, and her measurements were only a day off of what we said. I thought she had said we were 6 weeks 2 days (where I thought 6 weeks 3 days), but the screen said we would be due August 14, and I figured August 13. At any rate, we're much closer this time than we were with Danni. So maybe I'll believe them this time!