According to the Harry Potter Musical, Hufflepuffs are extraordinarily good finders. I'm going to need my OB to learn to be a Hufflepuff. The two visits I've had with her have been pretty nerve wracking. I'm sort of on high alert that something is going to go wrong in all of this baby growing stuff. There's a lot that could go wrong. You never know what kind of developmental stuff is going on in there. You're always at risk that partway through all of this, the fetus could be like "Oh hey, I'm dead now". It's a little stressful. Even when everything is progressing exactly as it should, nature can come out of nowhere and just bitch slap you. It makes doctor's appointments become stress filled experiences for me. I don't actually look forward to ultrasounds. Most people are like "Oh, I get to see my baby!" and I'm like "Great, this is probably the time they'll find that one terrible thing that they missed all the other times". Pessimistic? Yeah, probably. But, it's sort of hard to be optimistic when no one else around you seems to be. I'm still waiting to feel that "I'm so excited!" moment, because a large portion of me is just waiting for the other shoe to drop.
I'm not actively worried. I don't sit around and constantly worry. I'm just not ok with feeling excited either. Why get excited when it could all be ripped away from you with one bad appointment? I think that makes people think I'm not at all happy, but it's more that I'm not at all trusting. I'd love to be happy. I'd love to be one of those simpering women who says things like "There's nothing more magical than hearing your baby's heartbeat". Ok, maybe I wouldn't love to be one of those women. But I'd like to at least look forward to more things. I'd like to not dread ultrasounds, or approach them with an extreme sense of trepidation. I'd like to go in thinking "I'm excited to see what it looks like" instead of "What are they going to find?"
That brings me to my doctor needing to be a Hufflepuff. Each visit, there's been an agonizing 30+ seconds where she can't find what she's looking for. The first appointment, she seemed to have a hard time finding the seahorse within the vast expanse of my effing uterus. It's not that big lady, and there's nothing in it except a grape sized blob hiding right there out in the open. So why the struggle? No idea, but she couldn't find it for a while and I sat there thinking the worst. Then, several jabs later, she found it. Great. Now I can breathe again. The same thing happened this morning. No ultrasound this time, just a weird doppler thing that was intended to at least listen to the baby's heartbeat. Except she couldn't find it. For 30+ agonizing seconds, she couldn't find it. I'm not expecting anyone to relate, but when you sit there hearing the sound of basically nothing but static for that long you start to think things like "Oh, awesome, it's dead". No heartbeat, no baby. It's that simple. She moved the wand around my abdomen for a while, poking, prodding, adjusting, getting a lovely reading of my own goddamn heartbeat but nothing that sounded like the tiny seahorse was in there. Then, after about 20 years, she found it. Faint at first, but then as she figured out exactly where it was hanging out (really, kid, there's not much space in there, why the hell are we playing hide-and-seek?) she moved the wand and it got louder. More strange sound effects like out of a sci-fi movie. At that point she declared that it sounded "perfect" and proceeded to wipe gel off of me and wrap up the appointment. That was a whole lot of fucking stress for such a casual wrap up. Maybe in future we could not continue this tradition?
A Hufflepuff would never have had so much trouble.
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