Our First View of Perfection

On May 23rd at 8am, we got our first glimpse at our little miracle.

I got up that morning at 6am to go to the bathroom.  I then had to down 32 ounces of water in an hour and then hold that water till the appointment, so my bladder would be full.  It was torture to say the least.  In my senior year of high school, I took psychology where we watched this video of an abusive mom who used to give her daughter an enema of water and force her to hold it.  When the girl eventually wet her pants, the mom would beat her.  It was a sick video of human cruelness, but I felt that girl's pain during that hour of holding water in a very full bladder.

After making Mark drive as slow as possible to the doctor's office (the bumps were all bad), we arrived at the radiology department.  We were directed to the ultrasound waiting room, but thankfully we only had to wait about five minutes before being called back.  I think the nurse knew how uncomfortable I was, so she quickly proceeded to get to work.  After putting on the sticky, cool gel, she gave us our first glimpse of our baby.

I have had an ultrasound once before in a pregnancy, which was when I found out I had miscarried.  I held my breath and prayed to God until I saw that first image.  It was absolutely perfect in every sense of the word.

The image wasn't coming in as clear as the nurse would have liked, so she had me go empty my bladder in order to do an internal ultrasound.  While I was in the bathroom, Mark quizzed the girl on her credentials.  This has become his new thing every time we go to the doctor's office, making sure that everyone who sees me is qualified (although I'm not quite sure how well of a judge he is on medical qualifications).

I came back and we continued the ultrasound, listening to the baby's heartbeat, which was 157 beats per minute.  When we were done, she gave us a printout of the baby.  I seriously stared at the picture for hours upon end. 

I finally let myself feel the full emotions of joy and happiness.  This baby really was growing inside of me.