August 30th 2007

Here we go again on our own, going down the only road we've ever known, like drifters!... That is the Whitesnake lyrics that played in my head this morning. So, here we go again, only this time things are starting out a bit different. For example, last time before the first appointment we just got up and went. This time we got up early, something we have grown accustomed to the last year and a half and we made a full breakfast and watched the Wiggles. Funny how life changes after you have your first kid! And on this morning Carter was really using the new word he had recently learned, pronouncing it flawlessly: “No, NO, No, NO, No, NO!” Timing is another aspect of life that changes after kids, as many can attest to, it’s much harder to get to places on time, so we left in a rush and I forgot to brush my hair and Carter’s and Carter has some wild morning hair.

En route to the doctor’s office we passed a construction site with a bunch of diggers, scrapers and road builders and Carter was in awe. I think he demanded for us to stop and watch but we had to keep going to make up time. A few minutes later we arrived and there were a bunch of parking spaces, big ones too which is good because we upgraded to a larger Sport Utility Vehicle (SUV) since we had Carter. No more Subaru Outback Wagon, we traded Northwest cool for European safety.

Once inside I was immediately busied with entertaining Carter over in the corner with the children’s books. Collete wasn’t at the desk and now I was thinking, does she still work here? What else has changed? Kristy checked in. We didn’t get to meet with Jill today because you guessed it. Change! Jill now only works at the hospital and not in the doctors’ office so we had to find a new doctor or midwife for our visits. Now I don’t even know what’s going on. The brown bag presents that used to be out front in the giant basket with the sign that said “Take One” was gone. Now the presents are already waiting in the bathrooms, totally different from before. For those of you that don’t know what the brown bag presents are or want to know what it was like in the olden days, please read my blog from August 19th 2005 documenting our rookie year experiences.

We went over and Kristy weight in at 134Lbs and her blood pressure was 102/64, at least this was similar. Then we were taken back to the room where Kristy and I waited. She made a comment about her belly and the possibility that it might be “pooching out” a bit early. I gave her a hard time about having twins, explaining any early “pooching” and she made me take it back. Yes, with force if you were wondering!

Today we met with Ingrid. We had met with her before as a couple back in January 2006 and Kristy had seen her a month or two before for her final post natal checkup, where she got a clean bill of health, which we obviously took advantage of to make another little Ray!

She basically said that today was the big “take a lot of blood” and “do a bunch of testing for common diseases” day and if something is wrong we’ll call you. If not we’ll send the results to you in the mail for your reference. She asked if this was a planned pregnancy or a surprise and we said “planned” (Kristy has been running calculators and crunching numbers for dates for awhile). Ingrid said it was really great to hear that, which makes me wonder what the percentage of planned versus surprise pregnancies actually is?

We went over our hand out that tells us what to expect, our first ultra sound would be planned for sometime in the 18-20 week of pregnancy range, which is a lot later than our first ultra sound with Carter. At that time we would be able to find out the gender of the baby if we wanted to. We told Ingrid that we would be finding out the sex and gave her the reader’s digest version of my October 7th 2006 blog.

Kristy asked for suggestions on what she could eat to get more protein in her diet and Ingrid suggested hard boiled eggs and peanut butter, both of which Kristy has already introduced into her diet. Then Ingrid left the room and came back wheeling a portable ultrasound machine. We had seen one last time in one of the rooms but we never used it. Ingrid said it isn’t very good compared to the regular ones and she was right, it was like a 12 inch black and white cathode ray tube TV with dials compared to a new 42 inch High Definition LCD TV. We had to use it though, because it was too early to locate and hear the babies fluttering heart beat with the Doppler listening device. It was much easier to make sense of the blobs of stuff on the screen, even with the lower resolution, veteran skill. We got to see the amniotic sack and it’s associated fluid and a little flutter that was the baby’s little tiny heart. The baby was like the size of a standard lightly salted peanut shell with both nuts in place.

Kristy had to have a pelvic exam and one funny thing that I noted was Ingrid had car washing mitts on the stirrups to protect women from the icy cold supports that obviously were designed by men who had never been required to use one before and have that icy cold steel touch their bare skin. Kristy also asked about her moles since some got bigger during her last pregnancy with Carter and she also acquired a large number of new moles during that pregnancy as well. Ingrid measured a couple of the larger ones, said we’d watch them and if any became concerning Kristy would get a referral to a dermatologist.

And that was about it for our first appointment, the second time around.