It had been a week since we returned from our trip to California and Nevada. Minal's period was due around 25th of December but we assumed it probably was stress, hiking and restlessness that caused the delay. With week at home and no sign in sight she decided to take a home pregnancy test. Positive; but with a test that expired a year ago. She called me at work and we were already on a roller coaster of emotions but did not know what to expect yet. She has her periods regularly but once she had been two weeks late before.
I said I will stop by a drug store on my way home and pick up another home pregnancy test. I got home with with a bunch of tests but decided to wait until she had accumulated urine for at least 4 hours. We woke up around 3 in the morning and this time we decided to do go with the dipping method. Showed a + sign instantly!
January 10th, 2008
With two tests positive and considering the fact that her last period was around 23rd of November we figured we were already in 7th week of pregnancy. We decided to stop by at our physician's for a blood test to confirm our pregnancy. Results should arrive in a couple of days and so we will have to wait. But deep down we knew that the we were pregnant and that we should start looking for a gynaecologist for her. I dropped her home and went to work.
I started asking around at work for a good gynaecologist and got a couple of references. I also spent a few hours reading forums and reviews to find a good doctor. We were also, obviously, behind on our reading and had no clue what to expect and what our next should be. Minal spent some time on Framingham library website looking for books and videos that could help us catch up to 7th week of pregnancy. And there were all there concerns about her state of mind and body might have affected the baby. We started making list of questions we had to find answers to to make sure that the baby was doing alright.
January 12th, 2008
Minal had her blood test last Thursday and we knew it would take a couple of days to get the results. We did not hear from doctor's office on Friday or Saturday and we were getting anxious. Minal called doctor's office on Monday and what could have been more frustrating than hearing 'We do not have power at our office today so we cannot get to results of your test'. Minal was starting to swear at the Medical System of the greatest country in the world and who could blame her. I guess we will have to wait until the office that was built half in Framingham and half in Natick would get power in the half of the building that fed the computers that held results to our most important test in life, ever.
Minal called again on Tuesday and we got our results along with a big congratulations. It was real now. More real than those home pregnancy tests. HCG count in her blood was about 65000!! And yes her stomach had started showing signs of a life growing inside her.
I started making calls to get an appointment with a gynaecologist. Little did I know it was going to be another frustrating experience with the medical system. We were told that we will have to meet a nurse first to go through all the paper work and that doctor will not see us until we were 10 weeks into pregnancy. Minal was ready to leave for India where she could go to any doctor anytime and get answers to all her questions at once. I could understand where she was coming from since we had all these questions/concerns piling up on our list and we could not talk to a medical practitioner who could assure us that everything was ok. All we wanted to know was that our baby was ok. We finally settled with an appointment with nurse on 23rd of January and I stopped by at the doctor's to pick up prenatal vitamins so Minal could start getting her daily dose that should have started before conceiving. January 23, 2008
We reached at 11:05 am for our 11 am appointment and that nurse has a nerve to tell us that she will have to reschedule because we were late for our appointment!! Minal was ready to choke her to death but we wanted this appointment bad. I argued with the nurse rationally and she said she will have to cut short our appointment in case her 11:30 showed up. I am sure she was just trying to scare us into showing up on time for our appointments but she chose the wrong couple! She was lucky that she chose a day to be nasty when we could not afford to.
Fortunately she was not the one we were supposed to see. That would be a relief. We met the nurse, got through the paper work and our list of questions and concerns and were assured that none of it will have an adverse effect on baby's health. There was just one problem for us. Doctor we chose was pregnant herself and her delivery date was in May which meant she could be out on her maternity leave when Minal is about to pop, around August 30th.
When I got home that night we talked about it and decided that we will change our doctor. Since Minal had already give seven tubes of blood for different tests we decided to change to a doctor associated with the same practise and got an appointment for 4th of February; another 2 weeks away. Minal could not wait any longer to share this news with parents. We had decided to wait until after our first appointment with a doctor but 2 more weeks was a long time to wait. We talked to both sets of parents that night and also to Naresh and Sejal bhabhi.
Choosing the one
Until now I had not realized how important it is to have a good gynaecologist. Not just for medical support but also for emotional. Definitely you want somebody who would listen to you and attend to all your concerns. Of course we had not yet gotten a chance to meet any doctor to decided one way or the other. And no amount of reading reviews or going through a doctor's degrees was going to assure Minal that he/she was the one. So the following Friday we went through lots of bookings and cancellations of appointments with various doctors at various practises. We finally decided to go with one we had gotten a reference for from a colleague of mine. She liked her. But that did not mean we could bypass the paper work and/or our meeting with a nurse first.
Good thing was since our previous doctor and this one were both associated with the same hospital I assumed we could share results of Minal's blood test between the two practises. We got our appointment with nurse for 7th February and with Dr. Jane Molinari for 14th February.
By this time I had also started exchanging e-mails with our current landlord to know our options of moving out with breaking our lease that we renewed just 6 weeks before we found that we were pregnant. Fortunately he agreed to let us move out with a 2 months notice provided we make our apartment available for potential occupiers to take a look. Of course there was $250 charge for breaking the lease. We did not know where we would move to but after we were pregnant we were definitely not going to continue living at our current apartment for various reasons.
We had also figured that Minal's current insurance was only good for preventive or emergency care. It would not cover a lot of costs associated with pregnancy and besides she may quit before she was ready to deliver. So we had to move her to my insurance but it would take some convincing for my company to change my benefits in the middle of the cycle without any family status changes. Of course birth is one of those but pregnancy most definitely is not a family status change. So I submitted an appeal to my company's benefits center to allow me to add Minal to my insurance in the middle of the cycle.
February 7th, 2008
Our second appointment with a nurse. We had brought filled up paper work and so it would mostly mean for both parties to get acquainted and get answers to our questions, if any. Fortunately results from blood tests at our previous doctors practise were in the system and so Minal will not have to donate blood again. We were briefed on Early Risk Assessment which we had to decide on. Other than that there was general chatting about topics related to pregnancy. But I could see that Minal was relaxed and it appeared that at least this practise was the one she wanted to stick with. If she likes the doctor on our next visit then bingo! we would have our very own gynaecologist who will walk us through the most important journey in a couple's life.
February 14th, 2008
Today we were supposed to meet our doctor for the first time. It was already 11th week and from our reading we knew that we may get to hear baby's heartbeat for the first time. At the clinic we first met a nurse practitioner who asked for her urine sample and then jumped right onto looking for baby's heartbeat. Some gluey stuff on her belley and a couple of seconds with a Doppler later there it was. Baby's heartbeat, 150 beats per minute!! This was more real that the home pregnancy test or the blood test. This was actual life beating inside her belly. As soon as the nurse took Doppler away from her belly she went 'can we listen to it one more time?'. And there it was again. It filled our ears with joy we had never experienced before. All our concerns/worries were gone instantly and all we could hear were those 150 strokes a minute. What could be a better Valentine Day gift?
Later we met Dr. Molinari who checked the size of her uterus with other things and everything seemed to be fine. She briefed us again on Early Risk Assessment which is a combination of ultrasounds and blood tests to test for genetic problems early on. An ultrasound and blood test has to be done between 10 and 12 weeks followed by a blood test at 15 weeks. Results from all tests are then combined. Since we were already in our 12 week we will have to decide soon so that she could get us an appointment at the UMASS Memorial, Worcester where first round of tests will happen.
We talked about it on our drive back to my work and I also checked with my insurance to see how much will be covered. We decided to get it done and they got us an appointment for our first ultrasound and blood test on 19th February. I knew nothing would make Minal more happy than having an ultrasound to make sure everything was ok with the baby. Without Early Risk Assessment our first ultrasound would have happened after 18 weeks of pregnancy.
February 16th, 2008
Now that we had heard his heartbeat and knew everything was ok with the baby we were ready to share the news with our family friends here in the USA. We called Pappu and Neelanjana, Ben and Vijju and Mohan and Priya all on the same day. We wanted to share this with Pappu and Neelanjana in person when we met a week ago at Ravi's. Unfortunately we did not good alone time then. Mohan and Priya are expecting in March and they do not know whether theirs is a boy or girl. So when I mentioned that we would not like to find out either he tried to pull a bollywood stunt and started with 'Cool. If ours is a boy and yours is a girl' but I interrupted him then and there with 'Don't even think about it'.
First Ultrasound
With early morning appointments we were starting to settle down with the fact that our sleep timings were about to change. And 8 am appointments were just a very minute start that will eventually lead to sleepless nights and taking turns to feed the baby. The baby that we were get a look of for the first time that day. We were at the UMASS Memorial, Worcester Campus for our ultrasound and blood test as part of first round of tests for Early Risk Assessment. After going through paper work to verify that they had correct insurance on file we waited for our turn.
At around 8:30 we were called in for our ultrasound. The nurse told us that this test may take 5 minutes or 5 hours and it all depends on how much the baby co-operates. It was still only about 7.4 cms. and inside an amniotic sac but had started to control our life. Now that is amazing. Again, the gluey stuff and few seconds later we had a black and white video on the monitor. The image was very blur and we could not exactly picture what we were seeing.
To start with the baby was already lying on his stomach showing early signs of non co-operation movement. But at least we knew that he picked up his sleeping on stomach habit from me. Then nurse asked Minal to roll her side to face the nurse to see if that would flip the baby around to get him on his back. Didn't work. So she was then asked to face me and that did it. And sure enough the nurse said 'Oh he likes daddy!'. And no Minal was not thrilled to know that the baby was already showing signs of being more affectionate to me! I wasn't trying to rub it in or anything but I enjoyed the fact that he was favoring me.
Sometime later there it was, a black and white image of our baby waving at us. We could not differentiate nose from chin or anything but sure enough his fist was visible. What can I say, this was more real than listening to his heartbeat. For rest of the time I held Minal's hand and we kept staring at the monitor until nurse finished taking all measurements.
What was strange was that baby was bouncing a lot almost like having hick ups. Not sure if the baby is supposed to do that, at least we did not see that in any of the videos we saw, and we asked the nurse.
She said 'the baby is happy. I don't know how else to explain that'. Could be that the baby is very active and knowing that made both of us more happy. Fortunately, other than sleeping on his stomach, the baby co-operated and we were done within 25 minutes or so.
We stopped by the lab downstairs for blood work and from now on we will have 4 weeks between prenatal visits.
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