our first appointment

Immediately the day after finding out that I was expecting I called my ob/gyn to set up an appointment. I have been seeing her for my last couple of check-ups and have been more than happy with her. The soonest they could get me in was April 5th at 8 am. And so the waiting began...

I was pretty sure those 5 1/2 weeks would never come to an end, but some how they did and finally it was the day. It worked out perfectly with Nate's work schedule and he was able to come along.

We answered about a million questions about our health history, and listened to all the information the nurse had for us. We discussed my due date. According to a normal cycle I would be due October 26th, but since I average a little longer cycle we agreed on the November 1st due date. We will know more once we have our first ultrasound.

Then finally after about 90 minutes the doctor joined us to answer any questions we had. We had some concerns about having the baby in the hospital, and about what is and isn't allowed during and after labor. For now, we are both comfortable with our doctor and are planning to move forward with this option. We may look into having a midwife present to help communicate our birth plan (although I know these don't always go according to plan). I was excited for Nate to meet our doctor and see what he thought of her, and thankfully he liked her as well. I think she will be a great personality fit for us.

Then the time came for us to hear the heartbeat. She told us that we would probably hear two heartbeats, one mine and the other the baby's. As soon as she placed the doppler on my belly we could hear one really strong heartbeat. She remarked about how you couldn't even hear mine and that our baby definitely was not shy. We could hear as the baby moved in and further out from the surface. We have active little person on our hands. A perfect little heartbeat of 172. She let us just listen in silence for a couple minutes.

Now we are counting down the days until we get to hear again in mid May.

A day or so after the appointment, as I was thinking about hearing our baby's heart beat, I turned to Nate and said, "isn't it weird that there are two hearts beating inside of me?" He agreed, but what's even more fun is to think about how one of those heartbeats is what keep the other one beating. :)