It’s been awhile since I updated—quarantine brain + pregnancy brain = a whole new level of existential and emotional confusion on the regular.
Our ultrasounds have been cut back from once a week to every 4 weeks for the time being, which is fine with me because 1) I don’t want to be in any sort of doctor office more than I have to and 2) my husband is currently not allowed to accompany me to any ultrasounds or appointments, which I understand but I don’t like.
That first prolonged stretch between ultrasounds was a little rough. I still feared another episode of bleeding and having to go the ER and risk getting sick. I also couldn’t feel the baby moving yet, so I randomly had meltdowns wondering if he or she was even still alive in there (despite the sure sign of my ever-growing belly!), alternating with meltdowns about my husband or me getting sick despite all of our efforts to stay safe at our jobs at a grocery store.
Thankfully, halfway between our first 4 week stretch between scans, I had a doctor’s appointment. I chose the earliest time possible so I was the first patient there that day. The doctor (who was a fill-in for my usual OB since she was distancing herself from her patients while working medical rotations at the hospital) checked for the baby’s heartbeat with the Doppler and everything sounded great, which was a huge relief.
He also reiterated that the results from the chromosome blood test we had done a couple weeks earlier were normal, and I asked if the test showed the gender. It did, so I asked him to write down the gender for us so my husband and I could find out together. With all the uncertainty going on in our pregnancy and the world, we just wanted to know without any further ado or gender-reveal fanfare.
So when I returned to the car with an envelope that read “Baby Gender” on the front, my husband put down the game of solitaire he had been playing on his phone while waiting for me, and we opened the envelope to see....
“BABY BOY!”
We were thrilled! We honestly would have been thrilled either way, but it just felt more real somehow to know that we have a son. We quickly realized that though we had discussed names a bit, we didn’t have any boy names that we had both really liked, but we had plenty of girls’ names. We spent the next few days happily distracted from the fear of illness with the task of naming our child, and by the end of the week, we had his name figured out. I won’t be sharing it here, but it’s been a huge comfort for us to call him by name.
In the week before our next ultrasound, which would be the full anatomy scan at 21 weeks, the spotting that had been consistent my entire pregnancy finally tapered off to absolutely nothing. It was amazing. Everyone had seemed to be telling us that this type of bleeding usually cleared up by 20 weeks, and we were ecstatic that that seemed to be the case for us. I was anxious to find out if the hemorrhage was gone completely or if it would still show up on the ultrasound. I also began to feel some flutters and flops in my belly that week. For awhile I wasn’t sure if it was the baby or my wishful thinking, but it became more and more clear that there was someone moving in there!
The anatomy scan went well, though it was much longer than most scans because the tech was getting as many detailed measurements as she could. It was really disappointing that my husband couldn’t be there with me to see our baby rub his eyes and stretch out his legs, and open and close his little mouth. All of the measurements she got were perfectly in the normal range (there were a few she couldn’t get because of his position), which wasn’t really surprising given our son’s track record.
We found out later that the subchorionic hemorrhage was still there, though much improved. The fact that I haven’t had any more bleeding or spotting is a really good sign, so hopefully by our next ultrasound, it will all be gone completely.
In the last week, our baby’s movements have become stronger and more pronounced, so even my husband can feel them. It’s so amazing and reassuring every time!
So that’s where we are here at 22 weeks. It feels nice to be past the halfway point, but it also feels like we should be much further along... that’s probably true of every pregnancy, though, and double for every pregnancy that happens during quarantine!
Truly, nothing about this pregnancy has been what we expected, but we are so thankful for it and for every minute of our precious son’s precious life.
