Exhale

Everything is fine. 19 weeks. Heartbeat 145. Up 10 lbs from a reasonable starting point (up 16 lbs from my awful-no-carb-diet).

The good news of course comes after I woke up twice in the middle of the night from nightmares that I was bleeding. Very vivid nightmares. In one I was with my friend C. at the MOMA and I started gushing blood and I remember sitting in a stall crying and pleading with the woman next to me to give me a pad. Great, huh?

JD ran interference with Nurse Awful, who asked again exactly what I was doing in for an appointment so soon. The NP was of course as friendly and bubbly as could be. They haven't even looked at my anatomy scan results yet (from 16.5 weeks) so she has no idea if I have an anterior placenta or not, but will let me know sometime.

I am of course anemic (11, I think) so they gave me some prescription iron tablets. I suppose it wouldn't have been a big deal to wait another 3 weeks to start the iron, but I did that lab work 2 weeks ago so 5 weeks total would have been a tad bit long to wait to tell me ... And, the weird feeling of someone pushing pins into my bellybutton from the inside was not kicking (thank goodness! I was not looking forward to any more of that). It was my abdominal muscles ripping apart, something I failed to read about in any of my books. NP says it's totally normal.

In summary, the office visit wasn't nearly as bad as expected. Of course, I do find it slightly perturbing that at 19 weeks I have yet to see a doctor at this practice (The nurses explanation: she has a lot of c-sections to do, doesn't make me feel much better). But, I am now ready to let me deeply-submerged-inner-earth-mother take over for the rest of the pregnancy. And to help with that transition, barring any medical disasters in the next 3 weeks, all of my future care will be with a NYC midwife.