Halfway Point

Well, I’m actually beyond the halfway point, sitting at 21 weeks now! Woohoo! This pregnancy is flying by!

For everyone anxiously awaiting the gender news, we had our 20 week ultrasound on Friday! Here is the lovely picture (sorry it’s not the clearest….took a snapshot with my phone)! Can you tell what it is?!




No? Everyone’s supposed to be great at reading ultrasounds!

 

 

Well, we can’t tell either. Ha. That’s a picture of the face….or so I’m told. Ready to hear my horror story of an ultrasound?
We go in for my 8 am appointment, all excited because we were FINALLY going to know if this baby was a boy or a girl. We get  called back pretty much the second we arrive, and already I’m disappointed. Our normal technician, Danielle, isn’t the one performing the ultrasound.
This girl that brings us back seems, well, fresh out of college.
We get to the room and get settled in. First thing she asks is if this is my second pregnancy. Umm..yeah…my other child from my first is sitting right here. But I understand…he might not be mine and she wouldn’t know.
Then we begin. First thing to find…the heartbeat. 103. “Hmm, that’s a little low” she says. A LITTLE? You think I’m stupid?! I know that’s BAD low!!
So she tries again. 100. and again. 100. and again. 103.
Here I am FREAKING out. Why isn’t she calling another technician or dr to come in and look at this? Why does she just keep trying to get a “better” heartbeat? Obviously it’s low!
136. “There we go”

Oh. So it’s not my baby with a low heartbeat. You’re a crappy technician. Great.

She then proceeds to look for all the different anatomy that they are supposed to check during this ultrasound. Dallas and I are staring at the screen thinking “what the heck is she looking at?” We can’t see a baby. In fact, we can’t see anything but a uterus blob. I had 3 ultrasounds with Carson, and 1 before with this pregnancy. I know what ultrasounds are supposed to look like.
After about 5 minutes, we finally sort of see the figure of our baby. Dallas literally said out loud “Oh, there it is!”
So this tech keeps looking around. “There’s the kidneys” cool. “There’s the heart” cool. Then nothing.
She goes to look at the gender. Baby won’t cooperate and has its legs crossed. We just sort of laughed about it. But the tech does NOTHING to try and get a better view. Doesn’t have me jiggle the baby around. Doesn’t try very hard for a different angle (Granted the baby WAS breech and had it’s legs clear down in my pelvis).
But what really upset me was this.

“Did you eat breakfast this morning?”
Umm, yes! Of course. I’m a pregnant woman. Are you crazy? Skip breakfast? Yeah right!
“Well the baby’s just not moving that much, maybe it’s sleeping”

Thanks for assuming my lack of nutrition before assuming sleep. Sheesh.

Then
“Are you drinking enough water throughout the day?”
Ummm, again, yes! I’m a pregnant woman. I pee like crazy. I drink fluids like crazy to replenish the peeing like crazy.
Nothing more said about that. Awesome. Pretty sure technicians aren’t supposed to say anything to me about problems. They are just supposed to get the readings, send them to my doctor, and have my doctor discuss them with me (which she did, as well).

She tries a few more anatomy parts, and finally says she just can’t get a good view of them. So she tries the gender again, says she can’t get a good view of that either.

Just a side note, I’m summing this all up. This whole thing literally lasted 30 minutes. 30 MINUTES! Ultrasounds should NOT last that long.
Halfway through I was ready to tell her to stop trying because she couldn’t seem to find ANYTHING.

So now, we have to go back in 2 weeks to have this ultrasound done AGAIN because she couldn’t get good views of basically any of the anatomy.
Oh, then we talk to my dr right after this, and I find out why the technician asked about the fluids. Supposedly my amniotic fluid levels are low. But on the ultrasound paper (which my doctor gave me a copy of), it says they are normal, and just the technician herself said to my dr they were low.

Basically I think we got a really crappy technician, who probably WAS fresh out of college and hadn’t done this very much yet. All this ultrasound did was put me through MORE stress because now I’m worried about low heartbeats and low amniotic fluid. Thanks crappy technician.
When I go back in two weeks, if she’s my technician again, I’m telling her “No way, give me a different person”

So there’s my fun story! We don’t know the gender! Wahoo. And my baby was exposed to unnecessary radiation from the ultrasound since nothing could be determined. Awesome sauce.


In better news, Dallas stayed home with me all day that day. He actually surprised me and pretended to leave for work, then came home 30 minutes later with flowers. It was really sweet and totally made my crappy day better! What an awesome husband I have!