21 Weeks with a story from 14 weeks

Twenty-one weeks! More than halfway. I still don't have much to report. I have been feeling the baby a lot more this week. It's a bit confusing because I can feel the kicks in the back way more than with Ryan at this stage even though Ryan's placenta was in the front and according to our ultrasound, this baby's placenta is in the back. We had our first poking contest last night, not via Facebook, while the thunderstorms were passing through. On Tuesday night, he or she seemed to really like kicking Chris' head although Chris did not feel anything.  Either your dad has really thick hair (he does) or you better do some leg workouts, Baby. I started to feel some borderline painful stretching this morning while on our daily walk just like I used to with Ryan when I walked to work. I'm still able to balance on a bike! We will see how long that lasts for ...

And now since my pregnancy is (thankfully, thankfully, thankfully) boring at twenty-one weeks, rewind seven weeks to my fourteen week appointment. I started feeling the baby that week, which was ages before I felt Ryan for the first time. I had been feeling movement throughout the day leading up to the appointment. My midwife practice just moved hospitals and offices last year, and they still don't have an ultrasound technician so they normally only have their patients do one twenty week ultrasound since we have to go to the hospital for it. We had four ultrasounds with Ryan because I visited three separate practices over the course of the pregnancy so I was a little bummed that I hadn't seen the baby yet. I called our insurance company, and the representative informed me that they covered 100% for two ultrasounds and then as many medically needed on top of that. "Splendid!", I thought. I asked Chris when should we schedule the second one, and if we even should since I didn't need to see the baby twice (hello unnecessary medical spending), I just wanted to. And if we did schedule one, would it be in two weeks and then have four weeks after? Or in four weeks and then four weeks after? Or just how soon can I see this baby?! All a bunch of decisions that weren't that important, but seemed important at the time. 

I arrived at the midwife and found out that my appointment was with the midwife that I had visited four weeks earlier and who had delivered Ryan. I was disappointed since the other midwife has such an amazing personality so I was looking forward to seeing her. Plus, at my first appointment, we told the midwife that we knew the date of conception since we were charting, and she just looked at us like we had two heads. Ummm you share the same office with our practitioners!

I sat down and waited and waited in the appropriately called waiting room, and my phone battery continued to dwindle. The nurse notified me that they were taking a long time with the patient before me because they had to use their ultrasound machine since their doppler wasn't finding the heartbeat. Fortunately, it seemed that the baby was fine. They put me in a room until the midwife was free to see me. My phone died while I was waiting.

When it came time to check for the heartbeat, I laid down and started to feel the baby shortly after. He or she was being pretty active. The midwife kept searching and searching for the heartbeat, and after a few minutes of silence, she said that she couldn't find anything, but she was hearing movement. I was very calm since I could feel that sneaky baby kicking me! I silently tried to ESP (extrasensory perception or extrasensory plancenta?) with the baby. "Please don't stop moving around so much, and don't let the midwife find your heartbeat so I can see you on the ultrasound machine!!"

The ESP worked because the midwife still couldn't find the heartbeat five minutes later, but I was never worried because the baby never moving and grooving. We had to move to the other room where the ultrasound machine was. 

"Oooo! Does this machine print out photos?" asked this needy pregnant woman. The midwife said that if it did, she wouldn't know how to do it since she only knew how to turn it on and off. I mentioned that my phone had died so it was too bad that I couldn't take any photos of the screen. She offered her phone so I could take photos with it and then email them to myself. It was barely a moment before we saw the heart beating and beating away. That's my baby. What I thought was going to humdrum and hum-dumb appointment transformed into one where I got to see our sneaky baby and learned that our midwife has a kind heart.