Be Still My Heart

After over a week of trying and searching for the baby's heart beat, I finally broke down and called Crystal to find out what exactly I'm looking for! I've read about it until I thought I knew what I was looking for but evidently I was wrong. I thought I was looking for a fast heart beat of about 150 to 170 bpm but I found out that it can vary depending on the age of the fetus and that as low as 90 bpm to 110 bpm is normal for weeks 7 - 8 but during week 8 it starts to pick up and by weeks 9 - 10  it should be up to 140 to 170 bpm. Of course we are no doctors and we may have even missed a few beats but I had Jay time himself and count the beats for a whole minute and it came out around 91-95 bpm and when we check my pulse to ensure we weren't accidentally listening to my heart beat, mine was about high 70's to low 80's.

Once we were pretty sure we had found the heart beat, we sat and listened for a while. I was the one holding onto the fetal doppler and the probe that locates the heart beat. I found a good spot and just let it sit there. While listening, I didn't move the probe at all and the heart beat started fading in and out and getting stronger and lighter. We were pretty sure by that point that it was baby and not one of my veins or arteries because they wouldn't move around like that. Jay was pretty excited.

For those that don't know, Jay and I have had two boys together but each time I found out I was pregnant Jay was on his way to Iraq. He's missed both pregnancies and births of our first two children and he has no idea what this is like at all. So last night, was his first time hearing one of his babies' heart beats from in the womb.  As we enter the time of midwife appointments, ultrasounds, and OB appointments, Jay will start to see some of the stuff I went through with both previous pregnancies. So far this first trimester has been a little of both my previous ones. With Jayson, I wouldn't have known I was pregnant besides the exhaustion. With Eli, I was sick as a dog most of the time and by the time the 2nd trimester came, I had lost a little bit of weight because of how nauseous I was. This pregnancy has had a little nausea here and there but sometimes I can't tell I'm pregnant except for I KNOW I saw the two lines and I haven't had my cycle since May! lol

I was supposed to have an appointment with the OB yesterday but they called and rescheduled it for August 5th since they want me to be past 10 weeks and I'm not yet. Today marks 8 weeks and 4 days so I will be 11 weeks on the day of my OB appointment. I also have a Midwife appointment on August 2nd and I have already scheduled our 3D/4D ultrasound (we didn't do this with the first two) to find out the gender at 15 weeks. Hopefully we'll be able to find out then, they said they can tell as early as 13 weeks but that seems way too early to me. I'm tempted to change our appointment so it's after I'm 16 weeks but I'm just too anxious to wait! When would you do it? After 16 weeks or after 18 weeks or just wait for the normal 20 week ultrasound?

Let me hear what you have to say!