total dream, 11 weeks 2 days

I’ve struggled with how to find the right words to start this. Everything continues to feel very surreal.

On Friday we saw two arms, two legs, a brain and a heartbeat; a fetus, which, according to the book, is what it should be called now, however painfully clinical that sounds. Little hands, up by it’s mouth, legs a kicking. Heartbeat of 167. Even as I write this, it still doesn’t feel real. I came home Friday intending to post – to try to capture that raw emotion that one feels right after an appointment. But I couldn’t. It still seemed like a dream[1].

Throughout the entire thing, as C held my hand and grinned from ear to ear – hi, little baby – I couldn’t stop (wait for it) laughing. There were tears streaming down my cheeks but I was also laughing. In fits and starts, and in that kind of frenetic emotional state where you say out loud what everyone else can actually see – I’m laughing, I’m crying – because it’s all just so strange. Because I couldn’t believe this was actually happening. I just couldn’t believe that we were here. I couldn’t believe that I had graduated and moved across the hall from fertility clinic to bona fide OB office[2]. I couldn’t believe that the waiting room was full of visibly pregnant women – so pregnant that one was eating a football size burrito[3] while she waited and another was rubbing her belly and pacing, as though labor was imminent. I just couldn’t believe it – not any of it, frankly.

In our chat with the OB afterward, I was still floating. She was primed for my disbelief. When I began to ask her, so now that we’ve made it to 11 weeks, what is – she cut me off, the risk of miscarriage? I guess she’s been to this rodeo before. I could hear C’s deep, I’ve had it up to hear with your negativity, sigh but he also smiled – I think somehow content that he can read my mind; he too knew exactly what I was going to ask.

The rest of the visit is a bit of a blur. We talked about early screening tests, we talked about my B12 levels, I gave the lecherous nurses about nine pints of my blood, etc. All very riveting, I know. And then we walked out of there, still, as if on a cloud.

We have some prenatal care decisions to make – apparently I’m now a woman who says things like that <shakes head disapprovingly> – and believe it or not, the life outside my uterus has also been, in a word, busy. In addition to fetus arms and legs[4], the last week has been full of, ahem, milestones – potential new job and I ate my first salad in over a month (those two things are totally equal in my book). So, you know, BIG WEEK HERE tempered excitement.

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[1] Also, let’s be honest, I was starving. And you know, pregnancy has its priorities… <nom, nom, nom>.

[2] Apparently, I also graduated to a less invasive form of ultrasound. No more transvaginal wandings for this uterus. Which is why, as I motioned to the tech if I should like, you know, strip from the waist down <unbuttoning pants>, she was horrified. Oh, you just want me to pull my shirt up? C had his palm to his forehead at this point, basically hysterical.

[3] Woman after my own heart, naturally. Of course, this particular burrito smelled like iceberg lettuce, LETTUCE! – which, I promise you, has a smell when you’re pregnant – and had my stomach in somersaults. But whatever.

[4] I am aware that the phrase “fetus arms and legs” sounds totally creepy.