First Midwife Appoitnment

Today we had our first official appointment with Maggie.  The actual exam lasted about 15 minutes ... with ten of those searching for the Gypsy's allusive heartbeat  ... and the other hour and 15 minutes consisted of us making making fun of BA and talking about nutrition.  Maggie, Carol (her apprentice) and I agree we heard like 5 nano-seconds of the heartbeat.  She offered to let me come back next week (12 weeks) when the uterus starts to turn up and move out of the pelvis ... making it easier to hear the heartbeat.  But I said no, that I feel confident everything is going as well as can be.

Maggie and Carol did challenge us to try and stop shopping at the commissary and regular grocery stores  and start going to the farmer's market and local farms to get our produce, milk and eggs.  That nutrition I get now (or in a few weeks when I can stomach more things) is very important to the future health of the gypsy.  And both BA and I have always agreed that we are going to try raise our children not on the standard American diet.  So I guess we need to stop saying it and start doing it.  As soon as we got home BA made us some fresh vegetable juice ... which I couldn't force myself to drink :(

I can't wait until I look pregnant and not just fat ....

Maggie using handheld Doppler to try and let us listen to the heartbeat.  What I didn't know was the sound you hear really isn't what the heartbeat sounds like.  It is the noise the machine produces from the returning sound waves.

Using the fetoscope to try and feel and hear the actual heartbeat.