Thursday, April 26, 2007

Its for Real now


All I can say is WOW!!!!!!!

We had a first dr appointment today and we saw an ultrasound of our little baby. It was amazing. Traci and I were both in awe and amazed. We are a little past 8 weeks now and you can see a head, the heartbeat, and the baby was dancing and moving around. It is definitely real now.

I will give you a breakdown of the appointment:

1. Arrive at dr. office parking garage (They charged for parking. Have you heard of such a thing at a drs. office? I mean cmon, they dont make enough money as it is. Im all for docs making big bucks since they do a little thing you may have heard of...................save lives, but charge for parking. Very bush league.)

2. As soon as we get out of the car, I am in full dork mode. I asked Traci to bring the video camera but she conveniently forgot. So, I broke out the video camera on the cell phone and I am taping her walk through the garage. Cmon, it is the baby's first dr appointment.

3. We get to the waiting room and Traci has to fill out about 10 reams of forms asking every personal question from family medical history to if you ever took a toke off the peace pipe. I could have sworn I even saw one question inquiring about your feelings towards paper or plastic. Anyways, count this as another benefit of being the Dad to be. No paperwork (Woo Hoo, I hate paperwork) just there for moral support and the fun stuff. Oh yeah, these obgyns are on to something. The waiting room was packed. Having babies is big business. I need to find a way to capitalize on this.

4. We finally get called up from the minors and we are allowed to enter the sacred area in all drs. offices..................beyond the waiting room doors to the staging area. I call it the staging area becaue you dont get to see the dr. yet. You are just at step two of the assembly line. Here you get your weight taken and given strict instructions on what to do for all future visits.

5. Time for Traci to give blood. Once again, I lucked out. As most of you know, I hate needles and giving blood. Its the worst. But, Im really really good at giving advice....... like telling Traci not to look or that she can squeeze my hand while they drain her veins. I know that did the trick because instead of passing out from volunteering about a gallon of blood, she just turned white as a ghost. So far, i have this moral support thing down to a science.

6. Now we are off to see the dr and I get a first glimpse of the secret room the woman go to for their gyno appointments. There are some things in life, like the gyno examination room, that men just dont usually see or have any desire to see. Well, It had the bed with stirrups and everything. Though, It wasnt as scary and mideival as I thought it was going to be. I thought woman were chained down and their legs bound while numerous metal, shiny, and things that look like they hurt are put where those things just dont need to be while a bright light is shined directly on them. You know, kind of like they make it seem in sci-fi movies when the aliens are abducting and experimenting on humans. But, it wasnt like that. The doctor came in and did a brief examination.


7. Now the fun part. She started the ultrasound. Another learning experience for me because I thought they did ultrasounds on the outside of the belly. Nope, the first one can be done inside the body. I was a little uncomfortable with this but after the shiny things, this didnt look so bad for Traci. Then on the screen we saw it. I grabbed her hand and waited to see the first picture of our baby. You can see the outline of a blob with a head and you can see the heart beat. The baby was jumping around and dancing. I have never been so proud of a jumping kidney bean. The doctor said that everything looked good and the heartbeat was strong. Traci and I turned to each other and shared a look that expressed everything, excitement, shock, happiness, and the realization that WOW......... This is now real.


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