Day 85 - Everything in its Right Place

Well, as you know, today was scan day.

Unfortunately, the day started like a bit of a badly-scripted farce. Our local hospital is only about four miles away and it's a straightforward drive. The appointment was at 10.20, so we left at about ten to the hour. The journey was nice and simple so it just meant finding a parking space. I know that the hospital is bad for parking, and it's also quite expensive to park in there, so I was hoping to find somewhere on the road. Well, needless to say, it was cataclysmically bad. We drove along the front but there was nothing. We took the first available left-hand turning, miles past the hospital and then continued along the back and the remaining side. Nothing. Even that early in the morning, every single space was occupied. We'd have to take go inside.

We pulled into the hospital at the end where the maternity wards are (we naturally assumed that this would be where the appointment was). Crawling up and down the lines of parking spaces, we were cruelly denied at every opportunity. Every time I thought we had found a space, it proved to be a small car hiding behind a Chelsea Tractor. All of this was eating up precious time. We did a complete circuit and then I said to K___ that she'd just have to jump out and I'd try and find something.

With K___ at least vaguely close to where she needed to be, I immediately headed back out onto the road. By this point it was ten past, so I really didn't have much time to play with. One infuriating circuit later, full of the world's most irritating drivers, I was very frustrated indeed. I widened the circuit by another block. At the lights, I phoned K___, now en route to the Nightingale Centre, to give me a better idea of where I was going to need to be. It was virtually twenty past ten and I was really close to tears at the thought of missing seeing the baby because I couldn't get parked. How fucking rubbish would that be? I actually had to make an effort to calm down, because I could feel my driving become more erratic and aggressive.

As the minutes ran out, I finally spotted a space. It was only just long enough and I would be slightly closer to some poor sod's driveway than I would have liked. Diving out of the car, I pegged it towards the hospital as fast as I could. It was about three long blocks away and I'm not exactly a runner at the best of times. By the time I finally stumbled into the back of the hospital, my heart was going like the proverbial clappers and my legs felt like jelly.

There was no one in a uniform anywhere in the grounds and needless to say, no signposts. I walked as quickly as I could to the nearest building and through the doors. Fortunately, it was only a short corridor before I saw a nurse and asked for directions to the Nightingale Suite. Unfortunately, I was miles away. It was back outside into the grounds, second star on the right and straight on 'til morning. Eventually, I found a smallish stand-alone building with the right name upon it. As I ran through the doors I looked at my watch. 10.30, surely I had missed it?

It was with considerable relief that I was able to flop down next to K___ and hear, 'Yeah, they're running fifteen minutes late.' If I were a religious person, I'd have thanked God. As it was, I just thanked the NHS for being a bit crap when it comes to seeing people on time.

Right... let's get on with the bit about the scan, I hear you cry.

Before a pelvic scan, the mother-to-be has to drink one to two pints of water. The reason for this is that ultrasound requires a medium through which to travel and a bladder full of water is excellent for this job. Now, I don't want to go into too much detail about K___'s bladder, but it's not the largest in the world and by the time we got called in, she was absolutely dying to go. A young nurse asked her to lie down on the paper-covered reclining couch and pull her waistband down to below her stomach and tucked a towel into the band. He checked the date of K___'s last period and how sure of that date she was, duly noted by his colleague on the other side of the room. He squirted a goodly quantity of clear gel onto her belly and placed the ultrasound to her skin. Immediately, a picture appeared on the monitor above her head. At first, I couldn't quite work out what I was seeing. There was a big black shape that kept intruding on the right hand side of the picture, but I could still make out a shape that must be the baby on the screen.

'That's your bladder,' said the nurse, indicating the big black thing on the right. 'Did you have a lot of water?'
'Yes', said K___ immediately. 'I'm bursting!'
'I thought so. It's too full,' he explained and sent her off into an adjoining toilet to get rid of 'ten seconds worth' (however much that is!). While she was gone, I asked the nurse if that was the head on the left side of the still picture he'd taken before K___ had got up. He said it was and I could feel a big grin spreading across my face.

When K___ returned and got back on the couch, I pointed out the head on the left. 'I hadn't seen that!' she said. She told me afterwards that she was so desperate for the toilet that all she could think about was this pressure from the ultrasound on her bladder and that she'd not even clocked that there was a monitor there. With a bit more gel on her belly, she certainly saw it this time. The nurse was much happier. He moved the device about, sometimes pushing it slightly harder or softer as he went. You couldn't see everything on the screen at the same time, but he started to point out the spinal column and the dark mark in the middle of the belly that was the baby's heart. Reducing the pressure slightly, two arms were visible, then moving to the right, tiny legs came into clear view, and you could even see the feet were crossed at the ankles. The nurse used a mouse to create a start and end point from head to rump and the system measured the baby at 6.6 cm. 'So, you were right with the dates then,' he said and confirmed to his colleague that baby is due on 07/01/07.

It's really difficult to try and describe the feelings I experienced watching these images because words - certainly mine - are simply inadequate to create an effective image of this enormous sense of unadulterated joy that I felt welling up inside of me. It was a completely pure emotion that made tears prick in my eyes. It was bound up with relief too; although there was no reason to suspect anything might be wrong, this is the first time that we've had a confirmation that everything appears to be as it should. The nurse told us that there was a common fear, particularly among women, that the ultrasound is going to reveal that there's no baby there at all!

The nurse printed us out three pictures from the ultrasound but only charged us for one ('They probably do that for everyone,' said K___, the big cynic!)

The nurse then sent us to see a midwife to discuss tests, but I think that's probably something for tomorrow. I think it's about time that Baby M_______ made an entrance...

Firstly, here s/he is without the aid of ultrasound. Check that baby bump!



















And now without...













If you can't quite make it out, the head is to the right, facing the bottom of the pic. S/he's kind of kneeling on all fours.















In the shot above, you can make out the dark patch where the baby's abdomen touches the bump in the bottom of the womb area. That's the heart.














A couple of times, while the nurse was pushing slightly more firmly on K___'s belly, we saw the baby jump into the 'air', which was both unexpected and brilliant!