Dear Baby,

I saw you today! I certainly wasn’t expecting to, but your daddy and I saw you and your little heart beating away at 174 beats per minute. Why? Well, because you gave me quite a scare earlier this morning.

We were getting ready for church, when suddenly I felt like, “I need to sit on the toilet.” Out gushed quite a bit of bright red blood. I was terrified.

I thought you were dying.

I sat there for a minute, just praying, “God please don’t take this baby,” and trying to figure out what to do. Shane and I grabbed two of our baby books to see what it said about unexplained bleeding, and decided to call our on-call doctor’s pager. The OB (not ours) called us back within a few minutes and suggested we could wait a few days to see how I was, or go to the emergency room and have an ultrasound.

Needless to say, we opted to visit the emergency room.

By that time, the bleeding had stopped, and most of the cramping had gone away. But still, I was so worried about what was happening.

Everyone at the hospital that we encountered was incredibly nice. I had some vials of blood drawn. Turns out, I have type AB+ blood. Good to know. That means that I’m a universal recipient if I ever need someone’s blood. Works for me. We also found out that my HCG counts were at 115,000, which is good.

Later on, I had an ultrasound. The technician put the little wand thing on my stomach, and almost instantly, we saw you and your heart beating. Such a beautiful, welcome sight! As you might imagine, it made me cry.

You’re about the size you’re supposed to be, and your little bubble of an amniotic sac was looking good as well. She couldn’t see any pockets of blood, which is good. As far as the doctors can tell, everything is ok for now.

So, whatever caused this to happen, please don’t do it again! I know you’re doing your best to grow and thrive, and I’m doing my best to keep you where you’re supposed to be for another 30 weeks or so. Even though you scared the living daylights out of me, it was so neat to see you, and to see your heart beating, and to know that you’re ok. Oh, and there’s just one of you in there–that’s also nice to know.

Love,

Mama