12 Weeks, 0 Days: Dumping the Doppler
PHOTO: from a very early ultrasound, 5 or 6 weeks.
I'm currently almost 16 weeks pregnant with my second baby. My first baby is 3.5 years old. I wrote a couple entries in draft during my first trimester, including my decision making process on whether or not to share my news at all. Here's the second one.
12 WEEKS, 0 DAYS
This morning I threw away my handheld Doppler. Then piled coffee grounds on it. Half decaf, half caf of course.
PJ was sleeping past 6am by some stroke of luck, so I decided to dig out the AngelSounds Doppler out from the place I’d “hidden” it. I hadn’t heard the heartbeat in 5 days, I needed to check in. I oiled up and flipped the switch. Rolling the Doppler around my stomach like a magic eight ball. But all I got was squeaky feedback when I felt like I was close to the newly deemed fetus. It was making strange noises in general. So I stopped. Then flipped it on again, more feedback. Stopped. Tried again. And then promptly walked to the kitchen and threw that sucker away.
People say your second pregnancy you forget you’re even pregnant half the time. I guess maybe that’s the time I’m asleep? Which might actually be more than half the time.
The entire process of being host to a human under construction feels so unbelievable, so intricate and volatile, that I spend most of my day fighting anxiety. The two rounds of antibiotics I’ve had to take in the first trimester haven’t helped, but to be honest I’d be this anxious anyway.
My app today said something about the fetuses (feti?) intestines being in the cord, and would migrate back into their body soon. Like WHAT the actual H? Just casual magic. Just unbelievable. There’s what, a tiny perfect lower intestine in there? And it’s going to migrate to just where it should be? My brain explodes with the impossibility every day. I’m like yeah, yeah it’s the size of a apricot (or small laduree macaron) but go back to the part where the intestines will be migrating through their effing belly button!! Do not drop half knowledge on that!
Every tiny part of this is amazing, and completely out of my control. Every day I try to guide my thoughts to happy magic, to the whole vision of a little human being ‘knitted together’ in my womb. But most of the time, I’m like, is my body doing it right!? Is everything working?? Did the intestines make through the cord okay?!
I was hesitant to push my luck in this wild universe with a second baby, not because I hate getting fat or having acid reflux or feet the size of an adult elephant, but because of the unbelievably vulnerable, powerless experience of growing a stranger you already love beyond bounds with no control of how they’re doing. I can’t help the intestines migrate through a belly button, I can just exist, the passive host, and hope I made the right choice treating my bronchitis, and try not to eat an entire bag of jelly beans for lunch. And ultimately hope that in 5 months my reflux is my biggest concern.
What I know is true is that this little one's destiny is written and being written, I am here to bear witness and support it as best I can in each moment.
