Please, please, please, I prayed to a god I wasn’t sure was there, let the baby be okay. Let this baby that I didn’t even want be okay.
“Are we ready?” The tech asked, not waiting for answer before she squirted a cold bluish gel on my stomach. “This is a conductive medium that helps the transducer receive the sound waves through the skin.”
She placed the ultrasound wand—the transducer—on my belly and immediately the screen filled with white and black and gray static. Or, at least, that’s what I saw. Then the tech moved the instrument around and a black lima-bean-shaped bubble appeared. Inside that, looking a bit like something out of an alien movie, was the distinct image of a face.
I gasped.
“There’s your baby!” Dr. Wright exclaimed. “She or he is cooperating with us. It’s like she or he is posing for the camera.”
The tech maintained her position, and it was unmistakable, even to an untrained eye, that we were seeing a miniature human being. I could make out its mouth, its nose. Its eyes. An arm lay across its forehead, and below that was another white circle—the baby’s torso, I guessed. And inside there, the small black pulsing shape of what could only be its heart.
JC’s grip on my hand tightened. “Oh my God,” he whispered, his voice full of awe.
Oh. My. God.
Actually seeing it, this creature, this product of the love JC and I had for each other…I was flabbergasted. I couldn’t think of this as a foreign object any longer. Now it was very much a child—my child. Our child.
“But…that’s a baby!” I knew I sounded ridiculous—what else would it be? I’d just expected it to look…different. Not real. Not so…formed. “Isn’t it supposed to look like a jellybean or a peapod?”
Dr. Wright chuckled. “It does at first. You’re further along than we expected.”
“Like how far?” How the hell had I been living with that—that baby—inside me and not known it?
And how did I ever think that it would be something that I wouldn’t want? Because now, having seen it squirm and flip around, having seen the beat of its heart and the fishlike movement of its mouth—I was very much attached.
“We need to wait for the tech to finish her measurements, but I’m going to guess that we’re too far along to remove the device. Nancy,” she leaned into the technician, “can you focus on that flash of white above the legs.”
Nancy moved the transducer, pressing harder on my belly.
“Yep. Right there.” Dr. Wright looked back to me. “That strip above the baby is your IUD. The bad news is that we definitely can’t remove it. The good news is that it’s definitely wedged between the amniotic sac and the placenta. You can see the placenta is starting to grow around it.”
I couldn’t see anything of the sort, but I took her word for it.
“Usually what we worry about with an IUD is that the sharp edges will pierce the amniotic sac, but since the placenta is there, and the baby is firmly implanted in your uterus, I’m not that concerned about it. We’ll still want to have an ultrasound once a month to watch it. If all goes as it should, we’ll get the device out at birth.”
“Then the risk of miscarriage…?” JC asked tentatively.
“I’d say it’s about normal for anyone in the second trimester. Unless the device dislodges, but it really doesn’t look like it’s going anywhere.”
I hadn’t wanted anything bad to happen, but I hadn’t realized how relieved I’d feel to hear that nothing likely would. Tears gathered in my vision.
JC met my gaze with glossy eyes. “This is good. This is good, Gwen.”
“It’s excellent,” Dr. Wright concurred. “The heart rate is 161, which is excellent. The sac looks great. And you’re measuring at,” she waited until the technician finished drawing her lines on the screen. “Fourteen weeks, one day. That puts your due date at March twentieth.”
A spring baby. Wasn’t that absolutely perfect?
Except…
“Fourteen weeks? When does that mean I conceived?” I didn’t know what fourteen weeks ago was without a calendar in front of me, but I was pretty sure it had to be June.
And I hadn’t slept with JC until July.
“Since most people don’t know the exact day they conceived, pregnancy is dated from the day of the mother’s last period. It’s funny, I know, but that means we consider you two weeks pregnant at the time of conception.”
I let out a sigh. “Good. That’s better.”
Dr. Wright adjusted the wheel of her calendar tool. “Looks like your estimated conception date was June twenty-eighth.”