Part3:waiting

"Ut oh", I said aloud. This did not look good at all.

I immediately called John and said "I think I am miscarrying, please come home immediately." It was around 3:15pm.

Then I called the switchboard and calmly asked the receptionist if I could see my doctor, I thought I might be miscarrying. For some reason, this request sent her into a frenzied panic and she said maybe I should go straight to the ER.

"Oh no", I said, "I am NOT going there. I need to see my doctor."

I got to the office sometime before 4pm and waited in the waiting room with all the other patients. And I waited some more. It was getting late. A pre-programmed show blasted from the flat-screen tv--some sinister health show on all sorts of diseases. It was more than I could deal with. I plugged my ears and sang "la la la la" to myself for the next half hour.

During all this, I decided they needed a special room for people who thought they were miscarrying. The room needed to be pink, with lots of bubbles and lollipops. I realize this seems a bit far-fetched, but at the time it made perfect sense.

The time was approaching 5pm and I was terrified of being sent to the ER, where they stab you with the ultrasound probe and mix up your pee samples.

The waiting room cleared and I finally got to see my doctor. When she checked me, the first thing she said was "I think you are miscarrying...". Then she checked me some more and said "hm, you are closed up". This was a good sign, but not conclusive, so she sent me to get an ultrasound immediately.

The ultrasound room was very backed up that day. Their main ultrasound machine was broken and the other one was starting to malfunction as well.

Amazingly enough, they sent me in right ahead of everyone else. My ultrasound tech was a very icy-looking blond woman. She did not say hello to me. She was abrupt and fumbled with a portable ultrasound machine. She seemed very stressed out and could not get the machine to work. After jabbing me with the probe, she gave up.

The probe hit the floor and...gasp...she kicked it with her foot. It was so unbelievably unprofessional. And yucky. All those germs on the floor? Ak. I really should have reported her.

She tried the main ultrasound machine and a few minutes later, my eyes beheld the most precious sight in the world. A tiny flickering heart beat.

The tech clicked and said matter-of-factly "heart rate is 114".

"What does that mean?", I asked hopefully, for the first time.

"It means your baby has a heart beat", she snapped. Sheesh.

And then she said that the baby was measuring 6 weeks and 2 days. I had thought I was 7 weeks along, and so it was a quite the blow to be demoted by 5 days. When you have morning sickness, every day counts. I was extremely grateful that the baby had a heart beat, but I was still a bit concerned about all the bleeding.

And of course, she did not print out a picture of the baby.

My doctor came flying out of her room to meet us and ushered me into her office to discuss the ultrasound. "This is good" she said, "the bleeding is away from the baby and the yolk sack". She really did not know why I had experienced the bleeding. I don't really think there is any way of knowing exactly why.

She ordered 2 blood tests for HCG levels, along with another ultrasound for the following week, to check on the baby. Things were looking up, but I was still not out of the woods. We would just have to wait and see what was going to happen.

She sent me to get my blood drawn, with instructions to have it taken again in 48 hours. And hence, the waiting continued...