the calming effect of a train...

I am feeling better lately. I mean, physically, was fine today, not sick but that's not what I mean. Obviously, I've been a headcase throughout the entire pregnancy. I think partly because we are approaching week 10 (and it officially becomes a fetus) and because I think my large ovaries are getting smaller (though I won't know for sure until Thursday) and there is something about double digits that is refreshing. BUT, the d-man and I did something to ease both of our nerves. We rented a fetal Doppler monitor.

I'd read about it on the many message boards, to calm nerves and give a piece of mind between ultrasounds (which I HEAR are not every week or every other week once I leave the RE). It wasn't me who brought it up, though. When the d-man was off windsurfing, he stayed at a guesthouse belonging to a woman who spent most of her life as a mid-wife (and a lot as a windsurfer). She suggested getting it soon, since it works at 8 weeks. She even said that we should record the heartbeat on our phones so we could play it when we needed to hear it.

So, we got online and found one for $20 a month. Why not? It came the other day and we busted it right out. We quickly found a heartbeat but it didn't sound like the train or galloping horses, like the book said. When we counted the beats per minute, it was like 86. That is NOT the 171 it was at the office. We thought it had to be the smaller one....or we were counting wrong. I wasn't that confident and I didn't know if this was helpful or not...

Well, this morning I decided to look into how we were doing this whole Doppler thing....the hint I found was to keep one hand on my pulse and feel that as I was looking for a heartbeat. So, d-man was out this morning and I tried again. For the first 10 minutes I kept finding that same heartbeat, my heartbeat. It was the same as my pulse. Not sure why I didn't think of this before. MY heartrate was about 86 bpm. hmmmm. I slowly moved the knob around right where they said and finally heard a train, no question about it. It was so fast it was hard to count. I counted somewhere between 28 and 29 beats in ten seconds. I used 28.5 and multiplied by 60. 171. exhale.....

The d-man wanted to hear so we tried again this afternoon. It took another 10 minutes but I found it. The d-man lit up. I lost the heartbeat when I tried to move around and get it "louder" to record it on d-man's phone, but we were both okay with that.

I am getting closer to excited and moving away from terrified. Not there yet....but this is nice!