Well, this is bananas.

Currently 11 weeks + 5 days and would you look at that, it looks like everything is actually Just Fine.

After my last update, I continued barfing and not bleeding and feeling pregnant as fuck and, for the next ten days, bemoaning the fact that I was suffering so greatly for an unviable pregnancy. After all, we didn't even have sex the week that we would have needed to in order to conceive, if I was really only five weeks and a few days along. (My husband: "I'm pretty sure we did. Remember that time that my back hurt? And you said you'd already ovulated so this was just for fun?" Me: "Not really. I had sex for fun? You sure?")

And then my doctor's office called back like, "So are you going to make a follow up appointment or what?" I told them I'd call when I started bleeding, but they gently insisted that I come on in and take a gander at the ol' uterus so we could call it one way or the other. So I did, driving up by myself, grumbling about the cost of valet parking at the hospital and hauling myself onto the ultrasound table still grumbling.

The technician turned on the screen and I could see the sac. It had gotten bigger, but as she swiped through a few times, I could see that it was empty. I closed my eyes and tried to rest. I'd seen it coming at least.

It was taking so long though. I opened my eyes to ask what was happening, and I saw the tech taking what looked suspiciously like fetal pole measurements. "Is there something in there?" I asked. "Yes," she replied, "Looks like it's measuring about seven weeks." She zoomed in and I could see the rhythmic pumping motion of the tiny heart. She said, "I think that's a heartbeat. I'm going to go get someone else for a second opinion." The second opinion arrived and was much more confident: "That's a great heartbeat." They measured the sound waves and a few more things and then sent me on my way, totally confused but elated. The doctor called that night and said the heartbeat was well within the normal range at 155 bpm and that there was an excellent chance that this would become a full-term baby.

I went back at 10 weeks, sweating bullets. They put me in the same room where I found out that our first baby had no heartbeat, and I almost threw up. Then the doctor took a while to come in, and then he couldn't locate my uterus with the TV ultrasound wand, and I almost died right there on the table, and then he switched to abdominal and I looked up through the flood of tears and saw him pointing to my baby, who was moving her tiny arms and legs, all lit up on the screen.

Last week, we got the non-invasive testing results back and the baby is low risk for the trisomies they screen for, aaand... it's a girl!

Tomorrow is my NT scan, and if all goes well (please God let it go well, don't make me have to return the impossibly tiny floral ruffle-butt leggings I just bought) I think we'll really have the big exhale.