"It's very small," he said.

My heart thudded in my chest. They'd made me wait back here for nearly an hour, perched on the edge of the examining table in my surgical gown and socks. The doctor had an emergency, the nurse explained as she wheeled out the portable ultrasound machine yet again. She brought me a magazine to pass the time, but it was one that I'd already read on the subway ride up to the doctor's office that morning. I tried to read it again, and then I gave up and just started praying. And waiting.

Finally the doctor came in. "How are you?" he asked. "Terrified," I said. "Oh, I'm sure everything is just fine!" he said, "Let's take a look now, yes?"

Ah, the internal ultrasound - the first of many, as I'd later discover. The nurse adjusted the screen so I could see, and there it was - the tiniest little blur with an even smaller flicker in the center. The heartbeat.

"It's very small," the doctor said.

I knew it right away - there was something wrong. "Too small?" I asked.
"I did not say too small," the doctor said, in his melodic, accented English. "Very small. But they all start very small, and then they become big. It is the miracle of life."

I was not buying it. I continued to interrogate him as he continued the exam. "What does it mean if it's very small? Is it supposed to be bigger? Have you ever seen a case like this where the baby turned out okay?"

"All the time," he assured me. But it was too late - the joyous "pregnant, pregnant, holy crap PREGNANT" chorus in my head had started singing a different tune. This time it went, "you're fucked, you're fucked, you are soooo fucked." The baby was measuring eight days smaller than it should have - I was seven weeks exactly, and the baby only measured five weeks and six days.

My husband and I left the office and headed straight to a cafe, where I ordered everything on the menu involving chocolate and began furiously searching the internet for a more satisfying answer. I liked my doctor, but I was certain that he was bullshitting me. It just didn't make sense - how could it be normal for the baby's growth to be so far behind?

"Honey, the doctor said it was fine," my husband told me, "so I'm sure everything is fine. Please, stop driving yourself crazy and eat this Nutella thing before I do."

"It's not fine," I said, stuffing the Nutella thing into my mouth, "I just know it."

"You said the same thing about getting pregnant," he reminded me.

"I know," I said, "but this is different."

Looking back, I don't think that I actually had any sort of real prescient knowledge about the situation. Even a broken clock is right twice a day, and when you go through life convinced that everything is going to go wrong - well, eventually, you're going to be correct. But that was the last day that I really allowed myself to walk around with the "pregnant, pregnant, pregnant, yay" song stuck in my head. For the next four weeks, the song was more like, "pregnant, pregnant, pregnant... maybe... for now."