I'm Normal

Today is Mr. Tarheel & my 13 year anniversary...where have all the years gone? It just seems like yesterday, we were young, footloose, & fancy-free. Yes, we were dumb & naive too & dirt poor, but I'm chosing to remember the great memories! Here's to many more years of wedded bliss!

My prenatal visit this week was another "normal". There I was, sitting in the office, waiting to go back, feeling like an imposter. There were "pregnant" women sitting all around me. Very pregnant women. They were smiling, & chatting, & reading magazines. I don't feel like a real pregnant woman yet. I get anxious as I'm driving to my appointment. I write down my questions, & review them in the waiting room. These aren't your normal questions, like how is everything going. These are questions like, when can we make sure the aorta is coming off the left ventricle and how common is a choriod plexus cyst. I'm trying not to have a OCD pregnancy, even though I fight a gravitational pull toward it. I've even missed a few days of my prenatal vitamin...

It goes like this...you check your urine for glucose/protein. I did mine twice, just to make sure. I weigh myself and they trust you to tell them, the truth. I gained 4 pounds in 5 weeks. Wow! The assistant takes you into the room..super nice girl named Eva. She takes your blood pressure...again, I'm looking at the dial and wondering how can she be so sure when she's letting the air out that fast? Tracy comes in...she's chatty & smiling. She answers all my questions, reassurringly. She gets the doppler and puts in down very low and the wonderful sound of a heart rate of 160 is pounding away. I think to myself, the baby is still alive! I write down her instructions on how to schedule my ultrasound...at 19 instead of 18 weeks so we can see that pesky pulmonary artery/aorta that I'm so insistent to see. She tells me, if they can't see it, we'll do another ultrasound later in pregnancy. I add, can they see the diaphragm then too? She says, Yes! I start breathing deeper. Next week is the quad screen...the second part of my integrated screen. I should hear by the following Monday/Tues. Ok, I say, I write these things down too. Then a break in the conversation happens and I say, I'm anxious about all this. She smiles and says, of course, everyone who works with sick babies has anxiety, you're NORMAL. I'm normal, I think? Ok, I repeat to myself as I leave, I'm normal!