We made it!

In both ways, we made it! Both around the snowstorm and MUCH MORE IMPORTANTLY Bug made it to 10 weeks! Happy dance! Woot, woot! Yippy! As I've written ad nauseum, I have never had a bean make it past 9.5 weeks before, so this is a HUGE milestone for us!


Our appointment for the ultrasound was at 9am, but we kept hearing varying predictions of when the blizzard would hit the Boston area. Most forecasters originally said after the morning commute, but they kept moving it earlier and earlier, with weather.com saying the snow would start at 3am (they are ALWAYS wrong!) and most folks saying 7-8am by the time we went to bed last night. Normally we'd leave at about 8am for a 9am appointment, but we decided to head out at 7am, trying to beat the snow and ensuing traffic. Our plan was to hopefully get up there an hour early and get breakfast at a diner (props to Ryan for the idea!) beforehand and it all worked out swimmingly. We had a fun, yummy breakfast at a cute place called "In a Pickle" in the town center and then headed over to the clinic at 8:30.

This particular clinic is a jumbo one and has a staff of about 6-7 ultrasound techs on any given day. I have been going to this clinic for over two years now and I know all the the techs very well, most by name and I definitely have my favorites and non-favorites. First out was one of my very favorites and I grabbed NoodleGuy's hand and said "Please let her call our name!". No dice. Then came another well-liked tech, one of the older ladies, who tend to be more comforting and supportive and I said "Oooh! She's good too, call us, call us!". No such luck. Then, of course, came my least favorite tech. She's nice enough but less comforting, can never find my follies and always seems to be the one to give me bad news, whether it be babies without heartbeats or the fact that my follies have prematurely ovulated on their own. I have gone so far as to duck into the hallway when I could tell she'd be calling my name, so that she'd move on to the next person and I'd get the next tech (yes, I'm crazy). I knew she'd be the one calling my name, and lo and behold, I was right! So in we went, feeling nervous about how the appt had started off...

As I laid down on the table, I had this kind of out-of-body experience where I went from feeling 100% sure that everything was OK to 100% sure that she would tell me there was no heartbeat, all in the span of 5-6 seconds. It just seems like that's my usual at this point, to hear that there's no heartbeat, and I was gripping NG's hand really tight. The tech and I reviewed what was seen at the 8-week ultrasound and the fact that I've lost 2 pregnancies in the past around this point, before she inserted the wand; she knew we were very anxious to hear immediately whether there was a h/b. Well, she inserted, looked for all of 3 seconds, and turned the screen toward us and didn't say anything. I think, to her, it was patently obvious that we were looking at a spectacularly perky 10-week fetus. But it took me a few seconds between her big smile and the rapid flicker we were seeing on screen to squeak "That's a heartbeat, right?". To which she laughed and said "Yes! And a great one!"

She went on to measure (10w2d, two days ahead, clearly a genius! 178bpm) and then turned the screen to us to just let it sit there and watch Bug dance up a storm. This is where I got choked up, because I have never gotten the chance to see any of my beans moving around and it made it so much more real for us. He/she was wiggling his little torso and waving his arms and because he's mostly giant head right now, he looked exactly like the IM dancing/woot emoticon: . (Note: NG and I spent the first year and a half of our relationship in a long distance relationship with me in NYC and him in Boston, so we spent ALOT of time IMing and have all the cute emoticons memorized, so I don't think you've heard the last of us likening Bug to random emoticons ;) ).

After the ultrasound, we had the train schedule to Boston in hand, and saw that we could just barely get NG on a train and I could run back to the appointment with beloved RE. If the news had been bad, he would have stayed for the RE appt, but since it was happy, it was a bigger priority to get him to work before the snow started (it STILL hadn't started at this point) and so that he wouldn't get in too late because he has a new manager to impress with his stellar attendance and timeliness (not one sick day in 2 years!).

I knew my RE was in surgery today and was going to pop out to see me between ET and ERs and since they took us half an hour early, I figured it'd be no problem to run NG over to the train station (10 minutes away) and head back. Well, for the first time in the history of my clinic, they actually called my name instantly, apparently, after I had left. After dropped off NG at the train, I received a call from a nurse asking where I was - busted! I told her I'd be right there, arrived within 5 minutes. An intern-type person was waiting there for me and gave me total bitchface, not that I cared -- I've got a happy mama forcefield around me today. And then, of course, she led me to the surgery waiting room and said that Dr. Beloved was in the middle of a transfer and would talk to me afterwards. Which was FINE, but why all the hub-bub? Anyway, I waited about 20 minutes, logging on to my laptop to check in on work and Dr. B popped out.

We had the conversation in the waiting room, in front of a husband waiting for his wife who was in retrieval. It was funny because he was trying to act like he wasn't listening but he totally was, and I don't blame him, if it were me I would have barely been able to restrain myself from pulling up a chair to hear better, hee hee! Anyway, my RE was "thrilled" and said everything looked spectacular and that he really, really thinks we're over the hump this time. He ran down the stats again that the rate of m/c goes down to less than 2% after 10 weeks -- I would be happy to hear this stat over and over again, maybe an MP3 that I can play on my iPod as I fall asleep? ;) He asked me to call in after my nuchal screen and after we receive the blood test results + after the amnio to let them know that everything is going well (awww). We did the usual jokes about hoping not to see each other again for a very long time, if ever. I barely restrained myself from hugging him and think I would have if I wasn't afraid of contaminating his scrubs. I ended by telling him how incredibly grateful we are to him. I know I would not being sitting here, typing this blog post, 10-weeks pregnant without him. I know many people credit their REs for success, but truly, any other RE would have cancelled me at Day 11 when there were 2 tiny follies and a minuscule E2 level. It still boggles my mind that this life would not be here but for the one RE I seem to have stumbled upon who believed that my ovary had more in it than we were seeing.

So, color me very, very happy. I know we're not out of the woods by a long shot. But it feels so good to have gotten this far. First OBGYN appointment tomorrow. I will be nervous about the genetic testing, but I'm just going to enjoy today.

And it's STILL not snowing!

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p.s. Sending lots of luck to Kate today! I hope your embies look spectacular, that your ET is as easy as pie and that you get back home and snuggled in before the snow really begins to fall. And I hope you like Dr. B, if that's who you get!

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p.p.s. Tell me that Bug does not look exactly like Teddy Ruxpin, snout and all: