An Early Birthday Present

This story starts out bad, but it gets better: One day last week I had severe abdominal pains for hours. I chalked it up to super-charged preggo gas, until I realized that I could actually pinpoint a constant throbbing pain coming from two distinct places far from the usual site of gas pain (ahh, the joys of pregnancy!). It hurt so much that I could hardly walk! But after I got home and laid down, it went away after about 20 minutes. I called the doctor's office and they told me it was probably just "round ligament pains." I noticed information about those in my books, but I just skipped over them because I couldn't comprehend what they could possibly be (round ligaments? huh?) and hoped that it wouldn't happen to me.

That was the last I thought about it until I realized yesterday that all of my pregnancy symptoms have decreased dramatically since then. I know that's supposed to be happening at the end of the first trimester, but it freaked me out because as long as I felt like crap, I knew the baby was okay. All of a sudden I feel like myself again, and that makes me wonder if the baby is still okay. Plus my stomach has shrunk in the last few days, and I look less pregnant now than I did two weeks ago. And I had a dream this weekend that I had a miscarriage (those are seriously the worst dreams!). So I called the doctor again, and instead of reassuring me that this is all normal, they told me that they wanted me to come in and get checked out. Enter panic mode. I couldn't concentrate all day at work, and Stephen canceled all of his appointments this afternoon so that he could go with me to the doctor.

After the mandatory hour-long wait in an ugly and uncomfortable patient room plastered with posters of gynecological disorders and disturbing images of breast exams, the doctor finally made her appearance. We heard the heartbeat on the Doppler (whew!), then I got my early birthday present- an ultrasound!! The baby has changed so much since my last ultrasound four weeks ago. It's over three inches long now, triple the length it was then, and it really looks like a baby! It was making lots of jerky movements, just like it's supposed to be doing at this point in its development. Ahhh... I love seeing our baby! I can totally understand why Tom Cruise did ultrasounds on Katie when she was pregnant. It's the coolest thing in the world! So that was my early birthday present, which definitely makes up for not being able to drink some delicious red wine tomorrow in celebration of turning 27. Who wants to celebrate getting older, anyways? I'd much rather celebrate the new life inside me!