This was the first ultrasound, done at my first prenatal appointment with ObGyn Associates in Ithaca, the default care providers that the Tompkins County MOMS program sends people to. I was six weeks at March 28 and I had known I was pregnant for two and a half weeks. I was really nervous because I was afraid that maybe it was a false alarm or that the pregnancy wasn't viable afterall. But there was Jellybean, all head and furiously beating heart....
And BTW the date on it is wrong although everything else, like Jellybean's size is accurate.

The next ultrasound I had four days later, March 31, after a spotting scare. The blissfully unaware Jellybean had grown! It was now possible to really see it's little body. Thats the head on the left which is all squished up against its body.




After these pictures I decided to change prenatal care providers. I didn't like that every time I went to ObGyn Associates I saw someone different and there was no guarantee that I would even know the person in the birthing room. Additionally everything I was reading about Ob practices in this country was leading me to conclude that I did not want to give birth in a conventional hospital.

I called Monica Daniels who is the famous midwife in Ithaca. She does home births (which I will confess I wasn't totally jazzed about but I know I didn't want a hospital). Turns out Monica Daniels didn't accept Medicaid and she was planning a family vacation around my expected due date. So she recommended September Hill Midwifery in Burdette, NY--about half an hour away from Ithaca. Mom and I went to have a consult with Deb and I liked her right away. She assured me that she believed in as few interventions as possible and did not use a fetal heart monitor or any of the other unnecessary contraptions cluttering hospital birthing rooms. She assists births in a private birthing room (known as Deb's room) at Schuyler Hospital and has a birthing tub! Her technique is called hypnobirthing...which I will let you know more about as I learn about it....

Jack and I went to our first appointment with her right after I got back from St. Thomas, on April 24. She was a little sleepy (a birth the night before?) but went through all my files from ObGyn Associates and told me things from my file that they had never told me! Then she got out the doppler and had me lie down on the examination table. From everything I read there was a good chance that the baby's heartbeat would be easy to hear and I made sure I had a full bladder to make it that much easier (and me that much more uncomfortable). But try as she may, nothing could be detected. She kept saying, "You're not worried, are you? Are you?" Well my lip was trembling and there was blackness closing in on the outskirts of my vision...I just stared at her and tried not to cry. She was saying something about me coming back in a couple of weeks, etc. Finally I think that Jack said, "I think she's pretty worried." Anyway to Deb's credit she immediately called the hospital and arranged an ultrasound. Jack and I drove to Montour Falls and sat in the hospital waiting room watching "My Redneck Wedding" on CMT for an hour and a half (I saw three weddings) before we were finally able to go in. Sure enough there was Jellybean, not only heartbeating feverishly but waving its arms and legs all over the place! Turns out it was just too low and hidden under my pelvic bones. We walked out of the hospital on cloud nine.