Third Time Lucky?

That one line, consisting of eight letters made my, until then, dull day lift beyond recognition. I finished work early and picked V up from her office with a smile and a spring in my step. 

We were both so happy that we had got that positive result that we'd been longing for after a tough couple of months. We had a GP appointment to find out the results of the PCOS scan and even our GP was happy to hear our news when we confirmed that the suspected sac had turned out to be the real deal. He referred us for an early scan and we attended our local hospital a couple of days later. 

We saw that familiar splodge on the screen, our little fetus was growing well but we were too early to see a heartbeat (gestational age was only about 5 weeks). The scan technician booked us in for another appointment a fortnight later - the longest two weeks of my life thus far. Low and behold the following week we did see the tiny flutter of a heartbeat inside our little ink splodge.

I was, at first, reluctant to get too excited as I hadn't taken our past losses that well. No matter how hard I put on a brave face and was a rock for V on the outside - on the inside I was still a little broken. But the days passed and that was all put out of my mind by the returning wave of excitement at the prospect of being a dad and having a son/ daughter of my own.

V was also nervous, we we paid for a private scan at nine and a bit weeks as this was further than we had been before and neither of us wanted to go longer without knowing what was going on. We booked an appointment with Apeekaboo Imaging in Erith, about half hour in the car from us. I picked V up from work and we tried to make the journey in 20mins. After 45 mins and two calls to the company apologising for traffic, we arrived. 

Their offices were spotless and decorated with 4d scans of their clients, a couple of celebrity scans in there too for good measure! The staff, Karen and Gill, were so friendly and seemed genuinely to care about us as people, not just a means to getting paid that day. 

We were led in to a room where V was squirted with the ultrasound gel (how can one liquid never be warm?) and we were shown our little baby to be. We could see the fetal pole and arm and leg buds, we even heard the heartbeat... amazing

We left with a renewed spring in our heels and had sights set on our 12 week scan,  which was after a holiday to Bruges with our close friends. We decided we should tell them as there was no way we could make a long weekend blagging about why V wasn't drinking. They had been aware of our previous bad luck so were also overjoyed for us. 

After a weekend in which V put up with me being drunk (a lot), climbing the belfry (shakily) and generally being knackered we made it to our 12 week scan.

We went to the West End in London beforehand as our scan was not until 3:30pm and V would have driven herself mad with no activity. We bought a book called "How to be a Grandparent" as I had always wanted to tell my parents by giving them this book with a scan pic slipped in it. Soppy I know, but a guy has to show his softer side now and then. We then made our way to Kings College Hospital for the main event. 

We checked in and sat in the waiting area, and waited... and waited and waited... An hour and a half later we were called in to a room to have V's BMI, height and weight taken. Had we known this would happen before I'm not sure V would have turned up, but there we go! 

After these tests, V had her bloods take and we went back to wait a bit longer next to a family who, I swear, had the missing link as a father. Don't get me wrong, I enjoy a crossword as much as the next person but I don't answer questions at the top of my voice and I know that the Italian for ice cream isn't "Wall's"...

We were then called in for our scan. YES, saviour from the missing link - I was losing an IQ point per second of hearing his voice!

After several blood pressure tests, V was asked on to the table and the scan was started. I was gob-smacked at the little person we could see on the screen. My son/ daughter was there for all to see, bobbing up and down. S/he was not facing the right was so a senior technician was called in to carry out the measuring and NT (Neuchal Translucency) scan. The tests all came back fine and we had a one in 11,000 chance of Down Syndrome based on the NT score.

We left with ten pictures (including the one shown here of my future child appearing to be sat on the loo!). We called V's parents and brother to spread the good news. We then headed back to my parents (where we had parked for our train ride). 

When we got there I nonchalantly handed my mum a Waterstones bag, inside which was 'something we saw and thought of you'. They were both in utter disbelief; my mum could do nothing but open the Champagne (poor V couldn't join it but had a J20). 

We had passed our first milestone and made it to week 12, our first (well, third) sneak preview of our baby son or daughter who would be due to arrive on 21st September 2011. 

On to the 2nd trimester!