First Milestone

First, thanks to everyone for their well wishes!

Today was a major baby milestone. (No, I was not able to make it 48 hours with being sick. Maybe next week.)

I got to hear the baby's heartbeat! It was kind of fun (if not nerve racking for a few minutes while the midwife assistant who snuck me into an exam room even though it was just a "let's get your history" appointment searched for a bit)! Like I told Justin on the phone afterwards, it reminded me of the noise on a train... slow regular train swaying white noise of my own heartbeat with a fainter clicking white noise of the tracks underneath.

The other part of this milestone is that I've picked a practice/clinic and hospital. After much debate (with myself of course), I've decided to go with a large midwife group at the quasi-public, very prestigious teaching hospital. It is based in this great women's center, we have access to all the OB's, NICUs, etc you'd ever want, but I can also choose to have a water birth. Even though I haven't met my primary CNM yet, the assistant was just lovely and didn't bat an eye when I explained Justin and my somewhat crazy living situation. I also wanted to kiss her when her response to my confession that I'm trying but honestly not doing so well with prenatal vitamins given nausea included "oh, don't worry... Around here, we would actually PREFER that you not take them at all and keep even a small something of real food down than throw it up because you feel like you ought to take a vitamin."

With the whole teaching/research hospital thing, there are some quirky aspects. I had to decide right away if I wanted to let them use my DNA for some of their genetic research. I also was approached for participation for a National Study for pre-eclampsia and (ironically) certain vitamins. They gave me a few days to think about it... I'll probably do it if the fact that I'm spending the summer in the Midwest isn't going to destroy their protocol (that's the stats girl in me I guess!).