Underwhelmed!

So, I had my first OB appointment today, and I have to say - very underwhelmed! First, the nurse practitioner was caught in traffic, so I had this assistant, who knew nothing, take my history. Then the doc was running over an hour late. And the u/s equipment they have - total crap!! Seriously, it was so hard to really see anything. She was apologizing at how poor the picture is compared to the 4 u/s I showed her from the clinic, and it can't even measure the heartbeat!

But we did see our little one! And while we couldn't measure the heartbeat, she pointed out the fluttering on the screen to show it was there. Measuring the CRL length was funny, though... because of the bad quality, it was hard to tell where it really ended. The first measuring was 18, which was 1.5 less than on Friday! I said wait a minute, did it shrink??? She said nah, just bad quality on the screen, so she tried again and got 21, which put me at 8w6d, exactly where I am chronologically. I said "Sold - I'll take that one!"

Even though the logistics were not optimal today, I really like my doc a lot. She was so happy that we conceived naturally, and she totally gets my anxiety. She added a TSH and P4 to my bloodscreen, just to make me happy, and she said that while I'm not really considered high risk, I can go talk to the high risk team at the hospital when I go for my 1st trimester screening in two weeks, and if I want a referral, she'll give it to me.

Believe it or not, I'm actually feeling pretty calm about everything. The reality is - if I'm going to miscarry first trimester, there's nothing they can really do about it. So lots of appointments isn't going to help in any real way. We'll see what the high risk team says, but I might just proceed normally if everything continues to go well.

And that means monthly OB visits til July, then bi-weekly after that, and weekly near the end. With a lot of genetic / chromosomal screening mixed in. That's where my doc thinks my risk is - downs or other abnormalities - due to my age. And we're doing all the screening so that will be covered.

We spent some time discussing CVS vs. Amnio. CVS can be done in the first trimester, is just as accurate as the amnio, but has a higher miscarriage rate. Amnio is not done until week 16 or later, still has a risk of miscarriage, but not as much. My doc said that we can use the results of the 1st tri screening to see how likely we are to have an issue. I'm leaning towards waiting for the amnio, as I don't like any greater chance of miscarriage. But if the odds are very high that there could be a problem, I might opt for the CVS. I guess we'll just have to see...