Until I surpass my ninth week, a lot of the way I think about this pregnancy and therefore what I will end up writing here will have to do with comparing and contrasting this pregnancy with my first. In some ways, they’re very similar, like my sore breasts and blessed lack of morning sickness. In some ways, they’re very different, like my need to eat a whole meal every two hours this time as opposed to my need to drink a lake in one day last time. One striking difference happened last Thursday: my first prenatal checkup.
I never got to see my embryo in a sonogram because my first doctor’s appointment had been scheduled for two days after my miscarriage. Why? Because the earliest they could fit me in was when I was at MLA in Austin for two job interviews, which meant we had to push it back a week. Yes, that’s where my miscarriage happened, in Texas. Luckily, it occurred two days after the end of the conference and in the company of my great aunt and uncle, so I was in a good place as far as miscarriages go.
The miscarriage happened in the middle of that night before I hopped on a plane back for New York. I’ll write more about my experience with my miscarriage in a another post, but the point here is that I waited to go to the doctor until I returned to New York because I wasn’t experiencing any major bleeding or excessive cramping. I felt confident that I could make it, and I did… But that meant that the first sonogram that I ever saw was the black-and-white horror confirmation of the thing I already new to be true: my womb was empty, and there was no sound to be heard. From there, they immediately did an in-office D&C, which–and I’ll go into more in a later post–was traumatic. I still wish John had been there with me, and, yes, I’m crying as I type this.
Last Thursday, though, was a radically different experience. I decided to go back to the same ob/gyn practice as before, even though the doctor I saw could have improved his bedside manner, because the nurse staff made that terrible, awful, traumatic experience better than it might otherwise have been. They hugged me, called me “honey,” spoke to me in Spanish (and therefore made me think of Mama), gave me tissues, and commisserated with me in a way one would only expect a close family member to. It felt like home. So, despite the cold doctor, I decided to return. Luckily, that particular doctor has retired, so I saw his partner instead. He was nicer, funnier, and fast. As is true for most day-to-day goings-on in a big city, he talked quickly, but he also gave me the quickest (and least painful) pap smear ever and moved me from room to room quickly (there were four rooms!).
In the second room, the sonogram room, he continued to quickly explain what he was doing and why, and after inserting the transvaginal ultrasound into my vaginal canal painlessly, he turned the monitor towards me. Unlike my first time with a sonogram, this one showed that my uterus contained a little black sack (yolk sack) with a smaller sack (developing amniotic sack) within it, which held the little Rage Monkey. He pushed something that made the ciruclating blood highlight blue, and he nonchalantly pointed out the largest area of my Rage Monkey, which was a pulsing light blue, and casually said, “That’s the heart, which we can see is beating strongly.”
He couldn’t see my face, but I was already getting choked up. I mean, there they were, my little Rage Monkey! *Yes, I’m crying again. Shhh.*
Again, nonchalantly, he did something on his confusing computer contraption, and suddenly there was sound, which I was not expecting so soon. A rapid thump-thump-thump-thump that was going so fast we couldn’t even catch every beat. And I couldn’t hold it in any longer. The tears just started streaming down my cheeks in rivelets of relief and indescribable joy. *And it’s happening again and it’ll keep happening for a long time every time I think of this moment. Possibly forever.*
Still oblivious because his head was turned towards the miracle on the screen, which I”m sure seems very mundane to him, my doctor said, “That’s a good, strong heart beat. That reduces your chance of another miscarriage. Granted, I can’t promise that, but this is a great sign.”
I must have made a sound then because he finally turned to me, saw my watery mess, and finally slowed down. He moved across the room, grabbed a box of tissues, handed it to me, seemed surprised when I just took one and not the whole box, and reiterated slowly, “Yes, I know this must be a relief. We have a strong heart beat, and everything looks good.” I laughed an awkward laugh as he printed out the sonogram and handed it to me. Deep breath, strong heart, deep breath, strong heart.
Deep Breath. Strong Heart.
Of course, I shared that news with John and my family immediately. After all, they’re the strength in my heart.
The Rage Monkey 