Houston, We Have A...

HEARTBEAT!

171 beats per minute!

I'm exhausted, elated, and actually feeling like I can breathe for the first time in weeks!  That little blob with the flickering heart in the middle was the most beautiful thing I have ever seen.

All my other u/s have been done at the hospital or the (evil) fertility clinic in town.  This place was so nice and comfortable and didn't feel clinical.  They made my Beloved wait in the waiting room while I was taken back.  I was directed to sit in a changing room and wait for my technician.  I sat there and prayed and tryed to relax my quaking nerves. 

I heard the girl in the change room next to me get called in to one of the u/s rooms.  Only a moment later she was being escorted out and the tech with her was telling her in a rather grumpy voice that she needed to drink her water down as quick as she could.  I hoped that I wouldn't get the same tech, because I didn't think I could handle a grump today.  Of course it was that same tech who called me less than two minutes later. 

I followed her into the room, and put down my purse and water bottle where she directed.  She asked about my LMP and then about my previous pregnancies.  I laid down on the bed and she didn't say anything as she got started.

Now, there is something particularly challenging and potentially humiliating about an abdominal u/s for a very plus size woman.  Namely the parts of my anatomy that hang over.  When I was being scanned during my first pregnancy the tech was actually pretty mean about it and told me there was too much fat in the way for her to get a clear picture.  So, today, with a grumpy tech I was preparing myself for some form of mean-ness, and I laid there trying to hold my stomach in and out of the way.  But I was pleasantly surprised...

She told me to relax, breathe normally and let her do her thing.  It seemed to take forever as she was taking picture after picture, and pressing that sensor thing into my painfully full bladder.  I was laying there, staring at the ceiling, praying my heart out.  Then she stopped and she smiled at me and said, "Well, it looks like there's a little person in there".  She turned the screen toward me and and showed me the Halfling and the flickering heart.  I started to cry... tears running down the sides of my face and into my ears (remember I'm still laying on my back).  All I could say was "thank you" over and over and over.

She spent some time getting some shots of my ovaries and my kidneys.  Then she suggested that I clean my self up a bit, and go out and get my Beloved while she did her paperwork, and we could introduce him to his little one.  I practically ran out to the waiting room to get him, mostly out of joy and only partly out of need to pee.  We dashed back to the room and my Beloved cried right along with me as she got me situated again, and then showed us a closer shot of the Halfling and his/her heart. 

I'm sorry that this post is so rambling and long, but it feels like the biggest event of my life.  Now I can breathe, allow myself to dream, and get some much needed sleep.  But before I go for a nap, I want to leave you with this... our lovely little blob of a Halfling.