Another Scare

On Monday evening Flo started to get concerned that she hadn't felt the baby moving around that afternoon. Despite me having a prod around and having some stern words through Flo's belly, Tuesday morning came still without any movement and Flo was getting increasingly upset and distressed. This of course started to increase my own stress levels as I inevitably began to think what this could mean and the consequences...

We agreed that the most we could do was to call the hospital and ask for their advice, which Flo did as soon as the reception line was open. We then had to wait until 2 p.m. since this was the earliest available appointment with a registrar. I think I aged another 6 months during the wait (another grey hair), not helped by Flo's ongoing reports of no movement.

So, we arrived at the hospital, both extremely nervous. We explained the circumstances to the registrar (and intern) and they promptly whipped out the microphone and had a listen to Flo's belly. It was then that I exhaled my first sigh of relief as I distinctly heard a fast heart beat pumping out the speaker.

The registrar then left the room and returned a few minutes later informing us she'd found an empty ultra-sound room. Another couple of minutes past and there was our little baby on the screen. The heart was clearly visible pumping away and we could see some small movements of arms and legs. That called for another exhalation.

Back in the consult room, the intern managed to unintentionally get a laugh out of me and Flo. He's not the first intern we've been subjected to and as a result we're now more in tune with how completely useless they are. I don't mean this in a bad way, since everyone needs to be given an opportunity to learn and you have to start somewhere. But it made us giggle that it took him two attempts to take Flo's blood pressure (which looked very good by the way) and what topped it off was that, back with the reistrar, when Flo asked what the result was, he replied very precisely "One hundred and five over sixty two". Normally the result is rounded to the nearest five or ten, but even the registrar picked up on the intern's precision. This explained why it took him two attempts... he wanted to know precisely!

The third sigh of relief came in the evening when I asked Flo if she'd felt any movement that afternoon. She smiled and said "Yes, pretty much straight after the visit to the hospital". We both envisaged the baby chuckling to herself inside the womb having tricked her mum and dad! I think we're going to have our hands full with this one...