Graduation Day

Yesterday, it finally happened. I had wondered if they would hand me a tasseled cap or play Pomp and Circumstance, but instead it came without fanfare. It was just me and my husband sitting across from my doctor hearing these words: you're all done with me.

Wait – what? No more ultrasounds? No more tests or procedures? No more trying and pushing and struggling and working to make it happen? It's happened – really happened – and now there's nothing more to do but sit back and occasionally visit a regular old OB?

Apparently so. The ultrasound yesterday showed a baby (I would like your permission to call it – inaccurately but much more simply – a baby at this point. I have too much on my mind to worry about whether it is still an embryo or has officially morphed into a fetus.) measuring exactly on target at 8 weeks, with a heartbeat of 162. It had little arm buds (!) and you could actually make out a little human-like shape on the screen. And just when we thought we were done hearing good news, she told us there was no longer a blood clot visible in the placenta. So that bleeding? May have been a one-time thing.

I think I floated down the hall to meet with our doctor. She asked me how I was feeling and told me how normal I was for every anxiety I might have. When she took out that beautiful due-date calculator wheel, I just about cried tears of joy. I thought I might never get to see that wheel.

My new OB, recommended highly by my RE, has some huge shoes to fill. This doctor has helped give us a pregnancy, not only by meeting egg and sperm but by giving me the courage and confidence to go to these lengths to try. She is, quite simply, heaven sent.

I'm no Pollyanna – I am all too painfully aware that I will be carrying a degree of doubt, holding my breath just slightly until I'm holding a baby. But we've graduated to the world of good old-fashioned obstetric care, and I'm going to try (try!) to jump in with both feet.