Not a good way to spend a Sunday afternoon

Yesterday morning I noticed some light spotting. Not what I would call bleeding, exactly, but more than I've seen since my LMP which began back in the first week of May. It was thin and red and it freaked me out, a little, but I wasn't having any pain or cramping or anything. I picked up the fetal heartbeat right away with my home doppler. So I sat tight and watched movies all day, and by late yesterday afternoon it had stopped.

This morning it started up again, when I was at the airport picking my husband up after his week away from home. I was a little more freaked out, but we were at the airport and we were hungry, so we stopped to eat on the way home. Then we got here and we were both so tired we took a nap for a couple of hours.

When I woke up, around 4, I noticed I was still spotting. So I checked the sheet from my OB, about when to call the office, and decided I should call. When the woman at the answering service heard that I was pregnant and bleeding, she immediately conferenced Dr Cool in (luckily she was the doctor on call today). And when Dr Cool heard about it, she said, "I think you should go to the emergency room right away." That was when I really started to freak out.

Two minutes later, we were in the car. I'm really glad my husband was home. The ER was not crowded and they got us in fast. The nurse and the ER doc were both super nice. I had an internal exam, which revealed more blood than I had seen yet, but it didn't appear to be coming from inside the uterus, more from the outside of the cervix. They checked the fetal heartbeat with the doppler. And then we had an ultrasound.* All is well with the inhabitant, it seems, and the u/s didn't show placenta previa or anything else that might explain the blood. So it's a little frustrating not to have an answer, but the doctor said that if the bleeding didn't get worse, it probably wasn't anything dangerous. Everything looked good with the pregnancy. In other words, NBHHY.

Then Dr. Cool came in. She lives in a house that is literally 30 yards from the door to the ER, so I guess she just walked across the street. (Must be loud when the ambulances come in...) Anyway, she said she felt things were still going well, and that we needed to watch the bleeding. I am all for that. I have an appointment scheduled for Friday, and I will also call in tomorrow and report. Hopefully this is all going to right itself shortly. But I am very relieved that there doesn't appear to be anything wrong. And I'm also glad that my doctor took the cautious route with me, considering my history and all that.

Still, I feel totally wrung out.

* A word about the ultrasound. The fetus was mighty active today, which I could have guessed from how much trouble the nurse had capturing the heartbeat on the doppler for long enough to calculate the heartrate. It was turning its head, waving its little arms and legs, and presenting all kinds of interesting angles to the ultrasound tech. Or maybe she was making that happen, I don't know. Either way, we asked her to tell us if she saw anything that indicated whether it was a boy or a girl. But when it came on the screen, we didn't need to be told. It looked very, very obvious. It's a boy.

To be fair, Dr Cool warned us that at this point, it is possible to make a wrong call on the gender, due to the way the organs develop for both boys and girls. But I am 95% certain that we know tonight.

I have a feeling things are going to start seeming much realer to me, right now.