The Big News

Yesterday proved to be both mentally and physically exhausting for me.  At 9 1/2 weeks pregnant, I had my very first prenatal appointment w/ Dr. Galkin. 
For the past couple of months I've been walking on eggshells, paranoid over the possibility of another miscarriage.  It wasn't until a few weeks ago that I started to feel more confident that things were progressing normally.  The signs and symptoms started to multiply at a rapid pace, which helped me to feel more at ease.  Even still, I was more than a little anxious and nervous to meet with Dr. G yesterday.
Dr. Williams took care of me through-out my previous pregnancies, retiring after Savannah was born, so this is my first experience (not counting the miscarriage) with Dr. G.  My appt began at 9:15a and took about 2 hours, much longer than I had anticipated.  I spent the first 45 minutes going over paperwork with the nurse.  I was surprised to see that they to do things the 'old fashioned way' there, preferring to put pen to paper instead of using computers.  After that I had a lengthy exam with Dr. G. which included a full internal (never fun and always painful!).  He wasn't able to schedule me for my first ultrasound until next Wednesday, so he decided to try to check for the baby's heartbeat via the fetal heart Doppler.  He explained that it's rare to pick up the heartbeat this early on but he wanted to give it a try anyways.  I laid back on the cold examining table and held my breath while he ran the Doppler over my stomach for a couple of minutes.  Initially he kept picking up my pulse but then, quite miraculously, we heard the amazing sound of a very fast heartbeat.  It was steady enough to where he was able to count the amount of beats per minute and, much to my delight, he announced that it was a strong heartbeat!!  He then proceeded to tell me that when you miscarry you typically have a 12% chance of it happening again but once a strong heartbeat is detected the chances drop down to just 2% and after 12 weeks they drop again.  Hooray!
As soon as I got home and gave Jim the great news I made the "big" announcement first to the kids, and then to our family and friends.  While I'm still not out of the woods yet, I'm feeling much better about things now and will feel even better after my ultrasound next week!
It's very likely that this will be the final addition to our family so I fully plan on enjoying each and every moment of this pregnancy.  Right now I'm run down, tired and nauseous most of the time, but those are all small prices to pay for the end result.