Wha-wha-wha-WHAAAAAT!!??!

A lesson in life.

Part I
Most of you will have some knowledge of what's been going on with me the last month or so. Positive pregnancy test on July 6, ultrasound on the 7th -- nurse practitioner tells us there is a sac but "no baby" and my body will pass the tissue on its own. Fast forward one month: I'm still tired all the time, and my body has passed a whole lot of nuthin'. I'm getting anxious, especially after repeated calls to said nurse practitioner have told me nothing except "sometimes it takes a month... there's no risk in just waiting it out... blah blah blah."

Part II
I am finally able to speak to my Real Doctor on August 3. She tells me to make an appointment to see her on Friday the 5th, just to do a quick check before we schedule the D&C. So she checks me, and says, extremely calmly: "Okay, I'm going to sneak you into an ultrasound to check one more thing. Don't leave here today without seeing me again."
So I go into the ultrasound, and the tech works me up. As soon as the screen pops up, she starts laughing. Laughing. So I demand to know what in my uterus could POSSIBLY be so hilarious, and she says:
"There's a very alive baby in there."

What.

WHAT.

WHAT!?!?

"Look, the heart's just beating away. Look!"

Well, she might have said more after that. I was far too busy trying to come up with variations on the three or four mild expletives in my vocabulary... well, I know I wore "HOLY CRAP" and "OH MY GOD" right out. There were kleenexes and tears and sniffles and finally my doctor (who I swear was lurking outside the door the whole time) finally busted in with a HUGE grin on her face. She hugged my leg and wished me well and told me to start taking vitamins and to make my prenatal appointments. The tech printed me out a bunch of ultrasound photos and when I asked HOW that nurse practitioner could have missed a whole PERSON inside of me, she explained that that is what happens when you have someone who's not an ultrasound tech, doing an ultrasound. Job security for those techs, I tell you what.

I headed up to the front desk, where the receptionist (who is there every time I am in) was all "What can I do for you?" and I said "Well, I need to schedule many, many OB appointments because apparently I'm pregnant!" With a dramatic flair I tossed the photos on her desk. You should have heard the squealing! She called over a couple other nurses or assistants to collude on the best way to tell Joel... and to round up as many free baby-product samples as they could find. I tried to tell them that with an 11-month-old at home, my house is already overrun with baby products and that presenting Joel with "a rattle" would in NO way make him think there was another one on the way -- on the contrary, he would most likely think "Hmm, Meg must really want me to hold this... rattle."

Part III
Now, what I love about my clinic is that everyone there is almost more excited than I am. I think they specialize in infertility, so they take a viable pregnancy as The Best News Ever. When you've got five medical professionals with such obvious delight in their eyes, faces, and voices... well, it's impossible not to join right in. So whereas a month ago, I was not taking the thought of having another baby as particularly good news, on that day, hit with such a walloping blow, well all I could do was grin.

Part IV
I drive home in shock, pick up Lucy from day care (the big sister!! Manny Tanner!!) and get home in time to catch Jean also arriving at our house as we all go away from the weekend. I quickly scribble "Daddy, I'm going to be a big sister!" on the back of one of the u/s photos and attempt to press it into her teeny fist so she can hand it to Joel when we get inside. It doesn't *quite* work that smoothly, but there are several seconds of stunned silence when the news is broken. And then large, silly grins. And maybe a tear or two.

And the fun begins! ...