Today was our 12-Week Appointment! At our last appointment, my doctor mentioned that she delivers about 80% of her patients’ babies. I had asked her if I could bribe her with cookies to make sure she would deliver my young buck and she replied with, “I do like cookies.” Obviously, this means that I will be baking a lot of cookies over the next 197 days. We’ll see if it works!

So anyway, being that I’m pregnant and my memory is total shit, I forgot about my cookie bribery plan until this morning, which meant I had to spend my lunch hour baking cookies. I can’t complain… who doesn’t love baking cookies? I made chocolate cookies with white chocolate chips and classic chocolate chip cookies. Mmmm. Only down side, I had to leave the bowls and mixer thingies unlicked. I think that might be illegal… it felt wrong.

Delicious cookies cooling before going into their cute little holiday tin!

Anyway, that is so not the important part of the day. Our appointment was great and it is even more confirmed how amazing my doctor (and her nurse) are! My husband and I were around 5-7 minutes late to our appointment, which is only about a half hour long to begin with, and literally no one scoffed for a second. They are just the sweetest and nicest people around. Anyway, upon my arrival, I was instructed to pee in a tiny little cup. I had been anticipating the pee test, so by the time we arrived, I was very excited to relieve my bladder. Then, we met with the sweet Nurse Debbie and she made me get on the scale. Brace yourself, I’m about to be such a girl, but being that I had just eaten, who knows if my weight gain is totally accurate (hah), but I’m up 2 lbs. Sweet Nurse Debbie squealed, “That’s perfect!”, but I’m sure she says that to all the girls 🙂

After the damn scale, we just chatted until Dr. Kostik came in. She asked us whether we had decided to do the nuchal scan, which tests for different chromosomal disorders like Downs’. Mark and I had spoken a lot about this and ultimately, decided that we did not want to do the tests. No matter what the tests show, we would not terminate the pregnancy, thus making the tests a waste of time/money/etc. It felt good to have that behind us and then we got to move onto the FUN part… it was heartbeat time!!

I got all situated on the table and Dr. Kostik pulled out the tiny doppler machine. I was really nervous that we might not be able to hear the heartbeat, because a lot of people say that it’s not guaranteed (especially this early in the pregnancy). But, it was our lucky day! At first, it didn’t sound much different than my heartbeat (after a pretty rugged workout), but something about it was just so incredible! Obviously, I know that there is a mini person in my tum, but it’s so crazy to have these opportunities to “come in contact” with the babe. I think he or she was bothered by all the doppler ruckus, because when the doctor put the doppler back on my stomach to find the heartbeat again, the heart rate seemed a bit faster and sounded like a horse stampede. Although, Dr. Kostik thinks the heart beat is somewhere around 165 beats per minute. I think that was a rough estimate, but a little slower than last time.

The husband took a video, so as soon as I get it from him, I’ll post it!

Other than that, we scheduled our next appointment for January 9th and, we scheduled our 19/20 week appointment… the one where we get to find out the sex of the baby. I’m really excited! Our doctor uses board certified radiologists and prenatal specialists to do the “anatomy scan” with all of their fancy tools. A 4D ultrasound, a doctor to explain everything you’re seeing, and a full hour. We also lucked out and were able to schedule our appointment with our doctor right after the ultrasound, so we’ll go directly from the ultrasound to talk to our doc. The big revelation day is coming Feb 11th… 61 days and counting!

Symptoms

My body has been super achy lately and I’ve had some pretty nasty headaches. I’m thinking it’s about time to cash in on the massage from my amazing Milly (mother-in-law). But, regardless, I’m feeling happy and excited.