I told my new boss that I had to leave work early today to pick up my sister from her eye appointment, but it was really to get to the hospital to meet the specialist. The appointment started with a lovely registrar (I couldn’t catch her name, and she said it really fast and she didn’t wear a name badge).  We spent about 20 minutes going through my history, and she took lots of notes.  She was very thorough, and really nice. 

 

She then asked if I wanted to hear the baby’s heartbeat on the Doppler machine.  She cautioned me that it was very early and I was unlikely to hear anything, but if I wanted to try, she would give it a go.  She said a lot of women get apprehensive if they can’t hear the heartbeat, so I shouldn’t try if I was going to be worried, because it was highly likely that it was too early anyway.  I told her I was willing to give it a go, so I jumped up on the bed.  The Doppler machine is a really weird soundwave machine… it’s like an ultrasound where a gel is used on my abdomen with the soundwave device, but the other end is small and handheld.  It’s kind of like a walkie talkie because you hear a lot of static and a lot of noises from inside the body – like fluids moving, and I heard my heart beating, even though she was down on my abdomen (it was like an echo).  We couldn’t find the baby’s heartbeat, but we did hear noises like a mobile phone was going to ring, so I told her that the baby was trying to ring her, and we both had a laugh at that.

 

After the attempt with the Doppler, she left the room and came back with another registrar who was doing her rotation (in training) and she asked me if it was alright that she sat in on the rest of the exam.  I was okay with that, and so she handed my blood test results over to her to see if she could find what was wrong (?!) with them.  It turns out that they hadn’t tested for syphilis, and were going to send me for more blood tests, but I assured them I had had all sorts of screening blood tests trying to get pregnant, and that if they found syphilis, I probably wouldn’t have been here now J

 

She then paged the specialist, who came in, got a run down of my history, said hello, and then left.  Haha and one wonders why they get paid the big bucks!

 

Anyway, that was pretty much it!  She told me that I should make my next appointment with the hospital for 4 weeks time, after my scan, which I guess means another day off work (I already have my scan on 2 December and a 2 hour appointment on the 4 December to book into the hospital).  The receptionist asked if I thought an appointment in 3 weeks time would be okay and she booked me for 11am on 4 December, straight after my booking in appointment which was great (less time off work).