Midwife appt #2: 17 weeks 6 days

I am a little bit late with this update. My appointment was last Wednesday. It was pretty uneventful. My midwife arrived at 6pm. We started with getting caught up a bit on each others lives. Then I said, "Let's find a heartbeat and see if this baby is still alive."

She sent me to pee on a stick first - everything looked good except for specific gravity (as usual) and I was leaking ketones. That freaked me out a bit, but my midwife said it could be from not getting enough protein or being dehydrated and not to worry. Of course, later that night I checked the internet and it does seem to be no big deal. Some practitioners don't even check for ketones anymore.

Then I laid down on the couch and bared my belly. She felt around for where the baby was and brought out the doppler. She moved it around and I could often hear my heartbeat. She kept looking and looking. It felt like minutes. Brad was holding my hand and I was holding my breath. She asked if my placenta was in front and I confirmed that it was. She felt around some more for the baby. She said, "Oh, he has moved down here. She placed the doppler and we heard that fast rhythm that had to be the baby. I was so relieved, tears streamed out of my eyes. We just sat there and listened for another 15 seconds or so. Such sweet music!

After that she measured the size of my uterus which is measuring right on time. Then she took my blood pressure and as she wrote it down next to my last appointment's bp she said, "Ahh, so now we know to check for heart tones then take your blood pressure."

We talked about how I haven't been sleeping very well. I have restless legs which are completely manageable when I am not pregnant, but get much worse when I am. Every night I have trouble falling asleep. About 4 hours later I wake up from a vivid dream only to have trouble falling asleep again. We talked about using the herbal remedy skullcap - which works wonders for my restless legs, but it works because it is a mild sedative and I worry about using it too often. She thought that a 1/2 glass of red wine before bed might be better. As she pointed out, many cultures drink small amounts of wine throughout pregnancy and I would have a muscle relaxant as well as some good antioxidants. I think 1/4 of a glass would probably do me quite nicely, so I might just try it.

We also talked about a recurrent theme to my nightly vivid dreams. About 80% of the time they are about the time I was in high school or college and 80% of those involve my family members who are all appropriately younger. My midwife thinks I may be processing "family of origin" issues. My therapist said that as I am moving to create my own family, it is only natural that I would be thinking about my childhood and the things I want to duplicate and avoid.

As I read through this post before publishing it, two things struck me. 1) that I have reached a point where I can be so upset because it takes a few extra seconds to find a heartbeat and 2) that there is someone in my life I so casually call "my therapist." Thank you, infertility.