This week in the life of baby…

We start week “twelve” and had our doctor’s appointment today.

OK, so the big question on everyone’s mind is when I get an ultrasound. Not sure, but likely 18 to 20 weeks. Every pregnancy is different, and has different needs. For example, recently, I’ve had several friends who have irregular cycles go through morning sickness and not necessarily know they’re “late” and need the ultrasound to confirm pregnancy. (It happens.) So, this time, they took out the heart radio thing and tried to find Baby’s heart beat…

Which leads me to explain why the word “twelve” is in quotation marks. Yeah, they couldn’t find Baby’s heart beat. Now, at my stage, 75% of the time, they’re supposed to be able to find the heart beat. Let’s be real, there may be a problem. But, let’s look at some other reasons behind why we couldn’t hear the heart…

Josh and I… well, OK, Josh has been in Iraq most of this time, but we’ve been doing natural family planning (NFP) through Couple to Couple League (CCLI) for eighteen months now. Without explaining the symptom part of my observations, I take my temperature each day at the same time, and when I see a rather sudden shift in my temperature, that means I’m at my fertile peak (provided other symptoms are present… but I have a mixed gender audience so we won’t go there). As an aside, current NFP is based off of research conducted by the University of Minnesota Med School… this isn’t voodoo science.

So, if you look at the first day of the temperature shift and count 14 days, that should be about when a woman’s period will start. This, by the way is super cool if you have irregular cycles. I have slightly irregular cycles. And that means that I may not have conceived as early as what the “week one is the first day of your last menstrual cycle” rule states (day 14 of my cycle). I have had a fertile peak as late as 23 days and as early as 11 days.

Not being able to hear Baby’s heart is cause for concern because we should have heard it. But, it is not unheard of and there are legitimate reasons why we may not have been able to.

What’s next? I go back in three weeks for the same test. If no luck then, I’ll have an early ultrasound.

So, what else happened? They took A LOT of blood. I’m going to be tested for almost everything bad under the planet. And we’ll finally find out which parent I get my blood type from (with my parents blood types, I only have two options). They’ll count my platelets and take my glucose too.