Peanut

The technician's diagnosis: "You're definitely pregnant."

With an acrobat, apparently.  You would not believe the maneuvers we watched this peanut do.  Flips, somersaults, and a lot of kicking and waving.

The age by measurement is about 10 weeks, 6 days.  Technically, we're only at 10 weeks 3 days, so this is good news.  There were no signs in the preliminary reading of anything unusual or abnormal.  My bloodwork has all come back with excellent reports, we've picked up the baby's heartbeat three times, and now we have some nice black and white pictures.

We're being told repeatedly, "Looks like a nice normal pregnancy.  Have a nice day!"

All of which means...the little weird things that happened were just little weird things and no indication this time of an impending miscarriage.  God has not only blessed us with a strong little peanut, but given us overwhelming evidence to prove he has.

Hospital policy is to exclude everyone from the ultrasound room except the patient and that was making me pretty uneasy.  I really didn't want to do the ultrasound without Ben there, but hospitals have a way of sticking to policies even when you beg.  When they called me in and told Ben to stay behind, I broke from my usual meek habit of following the rules and said, "Isn't there any way he can come in too?"

"I'm sorry, that's the policy," the nurse said.  "You can talk to the technician, but we don't let anyone in and for now you'll have to go wait in the other waiting room."

So there I sat, off in a little waiting room while Ben was left in the main room.  I was pretty nervous by then (not a good combination with morning sickness and a stomach full of water...) and when I looked around for something to distract me, I was surprised and thrilled to discover and current copy of Cooking Light sitting on the table.  Nothing distracts me quite as well as indulging my recipe habit.  I found a few good ones and began copying them down on a piece of paper I found in my purse.  As a distraction, it worked pretty well because I got a lot less nervous; something I was very thankful for a little while later when the imaging center's manager beckoned me out into the hall for a conversation.

"I hear you have some family you would really like to bring in for the ultrasound," he said.  He was an older man, and he seemed kind of nervous to be talking to me.

"Yes - I was really hoping my husband could come in too," I said.  "I've had some bad experiences with ultrasounds and I'd feel much better if he were there."

"Would it make any difference if he just sat outside?" he said.  "Because we really don't like anyone else to be in the room while the technician is doing measurements."

"It would be better than nothing," I said.  I kind of brightened up, because Ben sitting just outside the curtain was a lot better than Ben in a waiting room across the building.  At least he'd be right there.

"Now, the reason we have the policy," he explained, "is because sometimes...when family is there...and the technician might make some kind of facial expression or the family member might not understand what's being measured or what's being looked at...things can get kind of unpleasant and people get scared and I would hate for you to have a worse experience than before."

It was funny, but right about then, I knew I could convince him to let Ben in.  All I had to do was be very calm and very reasonable.  So I looked him in the eye and said, "Well, what's happened before is I was present for an ultrasound where my youngest brother was found to have a genetic problem and it was thought at the time he might not even have a brain.  Then with our last baby, we had two ultrasounds where we knew the baby was dead even though no one told us as much.  We were together for those and we were okay for them, but it makes this ultrasound kind of hard for me to do."

He looked at me for a second and said, "I think in this case, we're going to make an exception from the policy."

I think I almost cried.  I said, "Thank you so much.  That is really, really kind of you and I appreciate it."

Later, Ben was waiting for me to use the bathroom (64 ounces of water at once?!!  Yikes!!) and the manager came by.  Ben said, "Thank you so much for letting me be there.  It looks like everything is fine and the baby is healthy."

The manager shook his hand and said.  "Good.  God bless you."

I'm not sure which was the bigger blessing for the day: another diagnosis of "everything is fine" or meeting a man with enough kindness and common sense to let Ben stay with me through the ultrasound.  I was very glad he was there.

And we tried two of the recipes for dinner.  They were both 5-star-keep-in-the-recipe-book ones...though I should probably write them on something more permanent than a two-month-old shopping list.