Week 9: Dangling Shoes

 Contents: 

Road Trip! 

The hospital has an office that the Maternal Fetal Medicine people from UVA use to visit our small town twice a week, but they were booked out for weeks. Instead, we ended up driving a few hours to the UVA hospital. 

Joe had to work, and it seemed silly to have him miss an entire day when we needed to be saving our PTO for having a baby. Instead, my mom and I went. 

It was nice to spend time with her. I had moved out of her house to shack up with Joe a few months prior, and I missed her. Sure, we live in the same town, and she's only half an hour away, but it's different. We spent the drive talking about a little bit of everything. 

I wasn't nervous about this appointment; I felt confident that the second ultrasound we had would have detected anything if there was something to detect. I figured that the midwives were sending me there, more or less, to cover their bases. My hormone levels were unusually high, after all. 

We got there with plenty of time to spare, so we decided to go and get brunch across the street at the Farm Bell Kitchen. This cute bed and breakfast served the best eggs Benedict I've ever had in my life, in case you, Dear Reader, ever find yourself in the area. 

Independence

Anyway, my mother raised my sister and me to be very independent.

When I was in school, I was a bus rider, starting in kindergarten or first grade. And when I think about putting my tiny daughter on a school bus, I understand why my mom did what she did on my first day of school: drop me off at the bus stop, go home, get in the car, and follow the bus all the way to the school. And I thought that was ridiculous when she first told me a year or so ago. For context, your average first grader is five years old; I am currently twenty-three. 

When my sister and I were nine and eleven, my mom let us go shopping around the mall by ourselves to get Christmas presents. She was waiting in the food court, of course—or so I thought. Little did I know that she was actually following us around the entire time, from a distance. 

But when you're a child, all you know is all you know. I felt as independent as hell as a little baby, my backpack about as big as I was. As a mother? I'd be following the bus, too! 

So, I had an inflated sense of myself and my capabilities when it came to life things. Sure, I was still shy and hated ordering my own food in restaurants as a preteen, but I did feel capable of Christmas shopping in the mall. 

Being so sick, though, was something that undermined my independence. 

I was dependent on the father of my child and the mother of the me! I needed support in so many different facets of my life. Just getting something to eat, refilling my water bottle, I couldn't do for myself at the height of it. And having my mother come to my doctor's appointments was another aspect of feeling a bit childlike myself. 

Of course, I am so grateful for my mother and all the support she's given me through the course of this pregnancy. But I hadn't had my mommy all up in my medical business since I was fifteen, getting my wisdom teeth and jaw surgery. 

I don't want to give the impression that her support was unwanted or unappreciated, though. It was an odd feeling at face value! 

Yet Another Ultrasound

Anyway, at this appointment, they were able to use an abdominal ultrasound, so I didn't need to have a parade baton shoved up my baby hole again, for which I was grateful. And they had heated gel! Peanut and I were in the lap of luxury as far as ultrasounds go. 

They were able to rule out moles, partial moles, and multiples yet again. 

We got more photos and spoke to the doctor about how everything looked normal, unremarkable, healthy, all good. She reiterated that we may never know why my hormone levels were so elevated. 

It was good to get extra confirmation. 

Dr. R recommended we have an early anatomy ultrasound at eighteen weeks instead of the typical twenty weeks at the UVA office again, but this far in advance, we could schedule at the satellite office in our town. 

Everything kept pointing to Peanut and I being fine, but it was a little unsettling, always having an extra step of care to rule out more complications. I mean, I love that I was taken seriously, and all the providers were crossing Ts and dotting Is, but it also felt like having one more opportunity for something to go wrong. 

Couldn't they just tell me that everything was fine? 

No, they couldn't because if they did and then everything was not fine, I could sue. For the record. 

But having extra appointments and extra steps to check on everything felt akin to waiting for another shoe to drop. Even if it was better to have some shoes than no shoes, I am not a fan of said shoes hanging over my head. 

I sent a text to update Joe at work and send him more photos, and we started the drive home, full of a decent amount of reassurance and eggs. 

All in all, though, it was a nice birthday present to get more photos of my little Peanut, given that my birthday was in two days.