10 weeks today

10 weeks... crazy. I've never made it this far. I was browsing pregnancy books in the bookstore yesterday and I read that as of 10 weeks, the fetus is fully formed. There is no longer any chance of a deformity - all the rest is just growth. I find that to be a reassuring thought, even though I don't technically know how well formed the Pea is now, because at least I can stop worrying about painting at work from now on.

We have an OB appointment today at 12:20pm. Mr. Ibis is coming to this one because the doctor said she will try to listen to the heartbeat on the Doppler. I was feeling excited and optimistic about it yesterday, but then I had anxiety dreams about it last night. In the first one, we went to our appointment and a nurse tried to use the Doppler. She searched for the heartbeat for about 30 seconds, couldn't find it, and gave up. She said, "Okay, well, we have an abortion doctor that's covered by your insurance so we'll just go ahead and schedule that for you." I protested, "What? No! You barely even tried to find the heartbeat! We can't do that!" Then I had another dream where I took some sort of fancy home pregnancy test that gave you a graph of all your hormone levels, and mine were all messed up... it said that I'd been dangerously close to miscarrying 5 days earlier. I was wracking my brain trying to remember if there was anything different about that day....

So, I thought I was feeling reasonably confident about things but obviously part of me isn't.

If we hear the heartbeat today, and I am saying if although I do feel that it will go well, I'll be 10 weeks, we'll have seen the baby once, heard its heart, I've had no spotting... I think I will be able to relax a little. I know I've said that before. Then we will be able to schedule our NT scan and that means we'll get another ultrasound in a week or two - by then the baby will be moving around, and that will be so exciting. My birthday is a week from Sunday and by then I'll be a few days shy of 12 weeks... I'm not ready to look too far ahead, but I'm so looking forward to getting out of the first trimester.

I'll be back with an update this afternoon.