Post #1: The Heartbeat

"What if it's not there?" I wondered as my midwife moved the doppler listening device over my pregnant stomach. It might have only been 30 seconds, it might have been 5 minutes, but it felt like forever waiting for the little thump-thump of the baby's heartbeat.
"There it is," she said with a smile. I gasped and listened to the steady heartbeat now coming from my stomach. I closed my eyes to focus on the sound and felt a wave of wonder and euphoria wash over me. I could hardly believe that my baby, still only 13 weeks along was alive and growing inside me. I looked across at my husband Anthony and saw a grateful, amazed look in his eyes. He held my hand and together we listened to our baby's heartbeat. I reflected back on the 3 months that had passed since we saw that first faint blue line on the home pregnancy test.

We'd been trying to get pregnant for about 3 months when we finally succeeded, a time period that is completely average and normal. Also average and normal was the absolute exhaustion I began to experience, the conflicting and constant feelings of both nausea and extreme hunger, and the sudden anxiety I began to feel about miscarrying this baby. It didn't help that other women, when they found out that I was only in my first trimester, would tell me about their miscarriages.

"Sometimes that happens, you know?" One woman at work told me. "Especially with first pregnancies. See, your body just doesn't how to do everything yet so a lot of times the baby just dies, but it's okay, if that happens, you'll be able to try again."

I calmly listened to her and nodded and then went back to my classroom to hyperventilate and cry hysterically until my next class, when I had to pull myself together.

One woman at church told me how she had carried her first baby to full term, but he died a few days before she gave birth to him and was stillborn. "That can happen, you know?" She said.
'Oh, I know,' I thought. 'Thank you for giving me a new terror to carry in my heart.'

Then there was the "helpful" advice of well-meaning women.

"Oh, it's a myth that you have to eat more when you're pregnant. You should keep eating the same amount."

'Really?' I thought, 'Then why am I hungrier than I have ever been in my life?'

During this pregnancy I have felt so hungry in fact, that if I do not eat more than my usual amount, my blood sugar drops so low that I can barely stand. I once fasted for a week in college and I was not as hungry then as I am now. I decided to ignore this woman's advice and eat when I am hungry. So far, I have been gaining, you guessed it, an average and normal amount.

But there we were with the midwife, and I realized that through all the ups and downs, the miscarriage terrors, the extreme hunger, the exhaustion, the throwing-up, we had somehow made it for 13 weeks and there was this little person growing inside me. We thanked God later that night for getting us this far. Whether we carry this baby to full term or not, he is in the Lord's hands and we are grateful for the opportunity God has given us.

13 weeks down, Only 25 weeks to go!