For some reason, I feel like we are having a daughter. For that reason, and also because I don’t want to refer to our future child as an “it”, I will refer to our baby as a girl until proven otherwise.
We first found out my wife was pregnant one week ago, last Wednesday. That day brought a decent-sized snowstorm, enough to keep a few (myself included) home from work. Yesterday was our first prenatal visit, which again brought inclement weather in the form of icy rain. I hope this pattern doesn’t continue.
Anyway, we expected another urine test or even a blood test when we arrived, so that the doctor would get some sort of confirmation about the pregnancy. But we were surprised to find that he assumed she was pregnant, and after the initial discussion, he moved right on to the physical portion.
She first disrobed and lied down on the examination table. The doctor checked her for any sign of breast cancer. Then he lubed up this thing that looked like E.V.E. (from the movie WALL-E) and inserted it into her ::ahem:: to get a look at the baby. He had to go in this way because it is too early to go through the belly. Well, the doctor found her through the ultrasound and showed her to as as a few pixels on a black and white screen. She didn’t really look like anything to us, but she was indeed alive, because a few pixels constantly moved around her midsection – that was her beating heart. The doctor was even able to let us hear the heart beating, and we heard it beating at about 150 beats/minute, amplified to fill a small room. I think that is when it really hit me that another life form was growing inside my wife’s body. She already had a beating heart.
We got a few ultrasound pictures to take home. Most of us have seen these grainy black and white images shown to us by family or friends, and we don’t really find them to be interesting because, at least in the early stages, the picture isn’t clear and you can’t tell that what you’re looking at is a baby. But you certainly look at these pictures in a different way when it is your baby. A baby shorter than half an inch, with a beating heart. The doctor said everything is going well, 7 weeks into the pregnancy. I found myself thinking like a Korean parent for the first time because I wanted to compare her to other 7-week old fetuses, but I stopped myself. (I don’t think she’s technically a fetus yet, maybe a zygote?)
Well, our second visit is scheduled for February 5. Hopefully, we’ll get a clearer look at our growing baby then.
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