Pregnancy: Week 8 & Our First Doctor's Appointment

How far along? 8 weeks
Total weight gain: Zero
Sleep: I get up on average of once a night
Best Moment this week: My doctor's appointment!!
Food cravings: Nothing notable this week
Gender: ?
What I miss: Alcohol. Especially now that I am in Las Vegas for the next week.
What I am looking forward to: Telling my family the big news
Milestones: Seeing the baby for the first time on the ultra sound.

Tim and I had our first doctor's appointment last Monday. Words cannot even describe the feelings. I had anxiety, fear and an overwhelming sense of joy the whole morning. The first part of the appointment was the ultra sound. The technician found the embryo right away (they don't call it a fetus until after 10 or 11 weeks). It was about 4 mm in length and it had a steady heartbeat. Multiples run in my family, and I wanted her to make sure there weren't two! Can you imagine?? She printed pictures and we immediately gushed at them. We were getting the first picture of our little baby. The moment was surreal.

The next part of the appointment was my annual, and the main check with my OBGYN. I have been seeing her for 3 years, and love her. But this was Tim's first time meeting her and I wanted him to like her. He did. We probably sat in the room and chatted for almost a good 45 minutes a about the health of the baby and our family history. She suggested a few tests that we will be starting at week 12 which tests for down syndrome and other abnormalities. It's important to us to do all the testing needed to make sure our baby is healthy. I plan on covering this in depth in another blog post but for now I am going to skip past it.

I got all my blood work done, which was a little scary. By the time the appointment was completely over, I had been there 3 hours and had scheduled my next appointment for week 12.

By the way, we looked like first time parents to be in the waiting room. We had our Mayo Clinic Pregnancy Book, all of our questions, our questionnaire forms and probably a look of anxiety all over our faces. All the pregnant women seemed like such pros with their adorable belly bumps.

I can really only say one thing so far about going through our first appointment: It makes everything feel so incredibly real. We both sat together later that evening and thought for the first time, we are going to be parents.