The afternoon came, and we went to the office just as we did in January, hoping for much different results. The sonographer started with an abdominal ultrasound, but couldn't see anything, so we switched to a transvaginal ultrasound instead. After emptying my bladder, I returned to the room, laid on the table to begin again, and after about ten minutes of the sonographer saying nothing, she quietly turned the screen to me, and it was at that moment I knew everything was going to be okay. She proceeded to show us the tiniest dot on the screen, which she explained was our baby! After moving the wand around a bit, she then asked us if we could see the small flicker on the screen. We did, and it was exactly what we needed to see at that moment.... a heartbeat! The sonographer turned on the speakers and we got to hear our baby dot's heartbeat. It was faint, since I was only 6 weeks and 2 days, but it was beating at 102 beats per minute and was quite simply the best noise we've ever heard.
She continued to finish the exam, taking pictures of my ovaries for quite some time. She then asked me to wait for a second in the room when we were finished. Her and the nurse came back in, telling me I needed to get bloodwork right after the appointment and that I also needed to come back for a follow up with the doctor immediately the next morning. This had me worried, and asked the nurse if I needed to be concerned. She explained there was no need to worry, we saw a heartbeat and that's a great thing! Yet, it still didn't convince me that everything was okay.
The next morning, we went back for our follow up. Dr. Juarez went over the ultrasound, explaining the baby looks completely healthy for as far along as I am, with a good heartbeat and good measurements! He also explained that they had found something on my left ovary. He believes it is a corpus luteum cyst, which is very normal in many pregnancies and usually causes no harm. It provides the hormones to maintain the pregnancy, so in most cases, they monitor the cyst and it ends up disappearing by the second trimester. He also explained there could be an extremely small chance that along with the viable intrauterine pregnancy, there could be an ectopic pregnancy on my left side. The chances of this are so slim that he has only seen it twice in his whole career, and the statistic of it happening to me is 1 in 20,000. I felt comfortable knowing that it probably wasn't the case, and they scheduled me for another ultrasound the following week to watch the cyst and maintain it's growth.
I know I won't feel 100% comfortable and out of the woods until we reach the second trimester, but this is already going so much better than the last and we are trying to maintain a decent balance between excitement and reality. Getting to see the heartbeat was extremely reassuring, and we're grateful that we get another ultrasound in a week to see our little dot again!
Until then!
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