And breathe...

Yesterday morning Keith and I went in for our 12 week appointment where we're supposed to pretty much just talk to the doctor, ask questions, then hear the baby's heartbeat for the first time. When the doctor started looking for the heartbeat, he couldn't find it. He looked for quite a while, then said something about "well, maybe you aren't as far along as we thought you were." I mentioned that I just had the sonogram to determine how many weeks a few weeks ago, and that day should be 12 weeks exactly. That made him keep looking. After a few more minutes he said that he wanted me to go get another sonogram to make sure that everything is okay, and mentioned what the steps would be if things weren't "okay". I was crushed! I came in expecting to hear my baby for the first time, and instead had to spend the next few hours wondering if he/she was even still alive!

The doctor's office doesn't have a sonogram machine, so they scheduled me for a sonogram at the imaging center a few hours later. Grammy was at home with Annabelle, so Keith and I killed some time having lunch at Sonic, then I went home to play with Belle and get my mind off of it for the next couple of hours while I simultaneously filled my bladder with way too much water. Then time came to go to the imaging center...

The nurse called my name, and Keith and I followed her to our sonogram room. When I got in there, she asked "What are we looking for today?" As I responded "Hopefully a heartbeat", I started tearing up again. I explained to her what happened, answered some other questions, then held my breath as she put the gel and sonogram thingy on my stomach, and I waited to see what we were about to find out. She immediately said, "Something moving around as much as this baby is has to have a good strong heartbeat!" Those were the best words I could have possibly heard at that point! She said that with how much this baby was moving all over the place, she's not surprised that my doctor couldn't find the heartbeat. She let me watch him/her for a little while as baby flipped, rolled, kicked, punched, and pretty much moved any way that he/she could! I remarked to Keith that it looks like we have another active kid coming! And breathe...

Because of a combination of factors, I've been pretty nervous about this baby and haven't given it nearly the excitement that I did Annabelle. The main "nerves" factors are that I'm so nervous about having 2 kids so young and close in age and that our house isn't big enough for two kids now so I know there's lots of work (and money) ahead of us to get it ready. Then, of course, still keeping up with Annabelle and trying to do all of the other things that have to get done while I'm so tired from pregnancy is wearing me down. Seeing the baby on the sonogram at 6 weeks helped a little, but it still just looked like a little bean and wasn't really moving around or anything so it still didn't seem as real. I was really hoping that hearing the heartbeat at the doctor's appointment yesterday would be the spark that I needed, but it ended up that I got more of a fire lit under me from the possibility that baby was gone. What a wake up call!

The night before our appointment, I finally started a webpage for Baby Donald 2.0. I was planning on sending it out after hearing the heartbeat yesterday, but of course, I had some updates to do. The updates are done, and now I'm ready to present... Baby Donald 2.0 webpage (so far it's just one page, but I'm sure there's more to come). You can also get to it from Keriland.

Also, there are some new pictures of Annabelle playing with her Grammy up on the photo album. We've been trying to get Belle to say "Grammy", but I guess that's a tough word. She has made up her own sign for Grammy though... she tilts her head back and makes a funny face. It's pretty amusing. Annabelle has become so attached to Grammy in the past few weeks, and yesterday she even started crying when she thought that Grammy was leaving! When Grammy does leave to go home in a few days, I know Belle, Grammy, and I will all have a very hard time saying goodbye (and Keith too... he'll be back to Keri-meals!)!