On Monday I had my Nuchal Fold, or 12 week scan. After an hour long wait to be seen, I was finally taken in for an hour long scan! It was an absolutely amazing experience. I know I said that after the last scan where I could see a little blob of human tissue, but this was something else all together. Immediately visible was a little head, two legs, two arms and a tiny little body. Every twenty seconds or so, my baby bounced up and down inside me as if he had hiccup that were just too big for him! (I say him, but it could be her!) The bounce caused the baby to do little flip-flops inside the fluid sac the baby grows in. It was so funny to witness, I kept laughing out loud and the doctor kept looking at me strangely. I eventually had to tell him that he might look at this all day, but to me it is the first ‘thing’ my child has ever done. I was moved by it!
At one point during the scan he kept prodding my abdomen to get the baby to move so that he could see and photograph the bladder, but the baby would not move. The doctor pushed the sonogram thing deep in to my stomach and the baby actually reacted by covering both eyes with both hands! I could almost hear the baby say “No” in the way that Martin does when he refuses to do something! It was so amazing, I burst in to tears! The poor doctor didn’t really know what to do with me!!
The scan was good – it showed the baby’s chances of having a chromosonal abnormality to be one in about 22000, which I have to admit are odds I’m fairly happy with! The nuchal fold (liquid behind the neck) showed the baby to not have downs syndrome, which although not anticipated was still a relief!
Today we met with the midwife for the first time. Sadly, she won’t be the midwife throughout. (For that privilege I need to fork out £7980 for a ‘private birthing experience’… feel free to send donations!!) It was just a matter of giving all our medical background and discussing our choices for the birth. She gave us an absolute mountain of materials, from pamphlets to books to magazines, everything you could ever want to know, and more, about having a baby.
It’s been a pretty good day, reading through the materials, seeing pictures of babies and happy smiley mothers. Of course, none of them are nauseous and being sick even despite the anti-nausea medication, but then, they do all have supermodel bodies and Colgate smiles!
Having the scan was great for that first bonding. I am so consciously aware now of this little person, flipping and bobbing about inside me, and I feel entirely in love with this personality that I’ve not even met yet. I am starting to think that nine months is really a very long time to make a nauseous woman wait!
