Emiko at 8 weeks and 6 daysAs a child who will be born nearly a decade into the millenium, you won't be able to fathom a world without the Internet. But your mommy is a Generation X'er, and I was in college the first time I surfed the World Wide Web. Since then, I've wholeheartedly embraced the Internet as a tool for doing research, paying bills, chatting with friends, downloading my television shows and best of all - shopping!
I've even flirted a bit with social-networking sites such as myspace and facebook, mostly as a way to get in touch with old friends. But I've always stopped short of blogging.
That is, until you came along.
Curiosity and a desire to leave a journal that you can read when you're older finally gave me the push I needed to start my first blog. I can't imagine who'd be interested in reading my maternal musings, except of course family and perhaps other mothers. But that's okay. It's really just for you and me.
Your daddy & I found out you were on the way on March 13, three days before his 34th birthday. We'd been trying to start a family for almost two years, and although I was able to conceive twice, both pregnancies ended in miscarriages barely halfway through the first trimester. So when two, pink lines appeared on the pregnancy test stick for the third time, our joy was guarded.
At my first appointment on March 27, Dr. Chan performed an ultrasound and declared, "I really think this is the one." You were the right size for a fetus that was six weeks and six days along - roughly as big as a blueberry - and your tiny, pulsing heart was beating steady and strong.
Dr. Chan put me on a weekly regimen of progesterone shots (literally a pain in the butt) and scheduled a second ultrasound for two weeks later. We knew that would be the real test. In both earlier pregnancies, the babies' hearts had simply stopped beating by the eighth week.
But you were different, Emi.
Two weeks later, when your grainy image became clear on the ultrasound screen, your daddy could see right away that unlike the other times your heart was still beating. It took me a few moments to realize that the gray, lima bean-shaped blob on the monitor was you, and then I could see the rapid pulsations. The doctor assured us your heartbeat was perfectly normal and that you were right on track in terms of size.
"Sometimes you can see the kid moving around," he told us, pressing my belly several times in an attempt to get you to move. But you wouldn't budge. I had to fight the urge to swat away his hand and tell him to leave my kid alone. Over dinner later that night, your daddy told me he'd been thinking the same thing. So you see, the instinct to protect you kicked in when you were barely nine weeks in the womb.
Actually, Dr. Chan is a very understanding ob/gyn with a friendly, joking bedside manner. Knowing we were both very nervous after two miscarriages, he told me he didn't really need to see me for another month but was willing to schedule an appointment before then if it would make me feel better. So we made an appointment to hear your heartbeat for the first time.
We left the doctor's office absolutely elated. It was a strange feeling. We'd never made it this far in a pregnancy before and even though we knew you weren't out of the woods yet, for the first time in a long time we had hope. So that night in early April we celebrated by going out to dinner, and over sushi, tempura and wakame salad we started to make our first, tentative plans for the future.
Two weeks later, when your grainy image became clear on the ultrasound screen, your daddy could see right away that unlike the other times your heart was still beating. It took me a few moments to realize that the gray, lima bean-shaped blob on the monitor was you, and then I could see the rapid pulsations. The doctor assured us your heartbeat was perfectly normal and that you were right on track in terms of size.
"Sometimes you can see the kid moving around," he told us, pressing my belly several times in an attempt to get you to move. But you wouldn't budge. I had to fight the urge to swat away his hand and tell him to leave my kid alone. Over dinner later that night, your daddy told me he'd been thinking the same thing. So you see, the instinct to protect you kicked in when you were barely nine weeks in the womb.
Actually, Dr. Chan is a very understanding ob/gyn with a friendly, joking bedside manner. Knowing we were both very nervous after two miscarriages, he told me he didn't really need to see me for another month but was willing to schedule an appointment before then if it would make me feel better. So we made an appointment to hear your heartbeat for the first time.
We left the doctor's office absolutely elated. It was a strange feeling. We'd never made it this far in a pregnancy before and even though we knew you weren't out of the woods yet, for the first time in a long time we had hope. So that night in early April we celebrated by going out to dinner, and over sushi, tempura and wakame salad we started to make our first, tentative plans for the future.
