Doctors. Eek.*

I got there about an hour early because I wasn't sure how long it would take to get there. This left me sitting in the waiting room for about fifty minutes watching a million pregnant ladies wander past and wondering if I'm going to get that huge. Survey says: most likely. :(

Then! Ultrasound. Turns out that at this early period (7 weeks, 4 days at that point) you can't get the nice friendly belly ultrasound. Instead they have to be all intrusive and do a transvaginal ultrasound, which meant I had to take off everything on the bottom. The tech said I could just pull my skirt up instead if I wanted, but that sounded a little too back-of-the-station-wagon for my tastes, so I opted for partial nudity instead.

It actually wasn't bad at all, besides the freezing cold goo they lubed it up with. It wasn't even noticeable once it was in, and I was too distracted looking at stuff anyway. They looked around to see how many babbies there were in there (just one, hallelujah glory be), and they checked out my ovaries (nondescript, but one has a kick-ass fibroid, apparently). And I got to hear a hearbeat. 161 beats per minute, apparently, which is nice and healthy. ("My son has a strong heart!" said Noah, in a fit of manly chest-beating.)



The ultrasound tech thought this one was particularly cute. I suppose she is correct, if you find nondescript cell-blobs to be adorable, which apparently I do, since I got all teary-eyed.

After all this, I got to go to the nurse and tell her all the sordid details of my medical history. This mostly consisted of her listing diseases and me saying "No. Nope. Huh uh." Then I got a huge packet of information on what to eat and not eat, and what medicine will kill Buckethead and what won't, and how not to screw everything up in general.

Lastly, blood. Lots of it. They took six vials. They had the door to the blood-taking room open, so I had the pleasure of watching the guy before me go first. It was this big tall Somali gent with the hat and robes and everything, and he was a complete baby about it. The nurse practically had to restrain him. I was very proud afterwards when I only had to be told to relax about four times and otherwise did not humiliate myself.

And that is all. I'm going to meet the midwife on November 5, when I will be almost 11 weeks along, and probably I'll get another ultrasound then. Hopefully by that point Buckethead will have some cool limbs to gawk at.

*Actually I saw no doctors, just an ultrasound technician and a nurse. They were both very nice though.