The Most Precious Heartbeat

Yesterday I heard the most precious heartbeat I've ever heard - the heartbeat of the child I'm carrying.

I am currently in my eleventh week of pregnancy, almost done with my first trimester. And the second trimester can't come soon enough! While many women go through their first trimester unscathed, mine has been marked by extreme fatigue, nausea, headaches, aches, pains, and bloating. I finally started feeling more "normal" last week, enough so that I could actually do some cleaning and get through a day at work without wanting to crawl under a table. I'm still running to the bathroom for a bout of nausea now and then, but it's nothing like it was before.

And here's where I need to give a shout out to my wonderful husband. Garrett has been taking wonderful care of me, doing a lot around the house, and even took over clean up duty after an unfortunate incident when I didn't make it over the toilet fast enough.

Now that's true love. You know you've found a keeper when he's willing to clean up the remains of your day, so to speak, without complaining. His only comment was, "You don't know what I just went through in there." You're right, darling, I don't know. And I don't want to know unless you're willing to see a repeat performance.

But I digress.

We're finally at the point in the pregnancy when I'm comfortable telling the world about the baby we're expecting. To say that we're excited would be an understatement. I've been wanting a baby since I was 12 years old, so once you do the math you'll see that's 22 years of longing. Garrett has wanted to be a daddy for a long time, too. We agreed when we got married that we would wait a year before trying. Well, we got the baby itch sooner than that, so we were already in our seventh week of pregnancy on our first anniversary. Which meant that we celebrated a very quiet anniversary since I was absolutely exhausted all the time.

Our families are super excited, too. This is the first grandchild on my side of the family, so my parents are just beside themselves that they don't have to adopt grandchildren, after all. My brother an sisters are ready for a little niece or nephew and have already started buying little presents.

Incidentally, when my brother found out I was pregnant, he called me (which is unusual enough because Eddie, you don't write, you don't call...) and said, "So, I hear Garrett got one past the goalie." Nice.

Yesterday I went to see my OB for a little procedure to check some stuff out. She surprised me by saying that we would get to hear the heartbeat. I knew that Garrett would be disappointed since he wasn't with me, but I just had to hear it. Easier said than done. About 15 minutes, two rooms, two nurses, three Dopplers, and one very sore tummy later, I finally heard clear evidence of my little sweet pea.

What a moment. Those first couple of months of pregnancy you're thinking, "Is there really something in there?" I took three pregnancy tests and still wondered. So hearing the heartbeat was just overwhelming. I started crying, which kind of freaked out the nurse. She asked, "Oh, was I not supposed to find it?" In my head I thought, "Stop your crazy talk, woman! I've been waiting for this baby practically my whole life!" But I just shook my head. So then she rightly guessed that this is my first.

I tried to keep from crying too much so that she could get the baby's heart rate. It was 180 bpm! Pretty fast, but still within the normal range.

Next week we have our first ultrasound. Garrett and I are so ready for it. We want to see our little one and hear that everything is ok.

Then over the Christmas break I'll start cleaning out the guest room, which will be the baby's room. We need to get some painting done, but I'm not planning to buy anything until we find out if our sweet pea is a boy or girl.

Right now we're just praying that the baby is healthy and strong.

The Most Precious Heartbeat

http://thelatebloomersblog.blogspot.com/2008/12/most-precious-heartbeat.html