Doppler Fun!

We're super grateful that my friend, Candice, let us borrow her little doppler machine so that we could listen in on our baby's heartbeat at home. It's really reassuring to just hear it beating and know everything is alright, especially with all the past scares and complications.

The doctor wanted us to come in (I was 12w6d on August 9) to hear the heartbeat on his doppler. The nurse came in, had me step on the scale, got my blood pressure, and told me to lay back. I guess I didn't really need the doctor for this part because anyone can do it, right? I mean we do it at home, so of course this nurse can do it.

She's pressing super hard and tells me to let her know if it's too much pressure, so I let her know...because I'm a wimp. She apologized but kept pressing just as hard. She was over to the left and then quickly went to the right. I told her we used a doppler at home and the baby is usually right in the middle under my belly button. She continued to search quickly for the heartbeat with no luck. She told us "I can't find it and the doctor is paging me anyway so I'm gonna let him come in and see if he can find it". I'm sorry but you don't tell a pregnant chick, especially one who had a miscarriage earlier that year, that you "can't find" her baby's heartbeat. I thought that was pretty crappy bedside manner and was glad to deal with the doctor instead of her after that.

So a few minutes later, Dr. Kil came in. Always super nice, shook our hands and asked how I'm feeling. I told him the nurse said she couldn't find the heartbeat so I hoped he could. He asked me to lay back, said it's gonna be a little cold, and the exact second the doppler hit my stomach, we immediately started hearing the heartbeat. He literally went STRAIGHT to where the baby was. I started laughing because I couldn't believe how easy he made it look, especially compared to the nurse a few minutes earlier. Mark told me to stop laughing because he wanted to keep listening. You can hear it when I laugh, it's really loud through the doppler speakers. He left it on for a few seconds longer and then wiped the gel off for me. The rate was 155bpm and he said that was normal. He told me everything looked and sounded good and then we went to make our appointment for 4 weeks from then, just for a checkup. Next sonogram with him will be when I'm 20 weeks.