Week 6-7, more spotting, hibernating and a heart beat.

By the time I had my 6 week scan I was dated about 7 weeks and told to return at 9 weeks.

The brown spotting had returned twice and each time tailed off but as my symptoms grew stronger each time it was more frightening and found myself terrified. I managed to book the scan at 10.30am when in fact Dr P had told me he started work at 14.00. So at 11:00 as I rocked back and forth in the waiting room thinking 'what's taking so long/why are my boobs not sore/what is that shooting pain in my hip/how will I leave the clinic if it's bad news/how will I look after N/if it's OK will I tell my Mum?'...when the receptionist passed me the phone as it was Dr P saying 'um...I'm on the other side of town, can you come back'.

I took this as a bad sign and felt like I couldn't cope with the wait, I think it goes down in history as one of the most stressful moments in my life. I kept thinking it could be ok, to just keep busy until then but the brown spotting was haunting me....old blood is ok they tell me....but it must be fresh, new blood at some point, so where is it coming from?

Finally, back in the good old lithotomy position, the dildocam is in place and Dr P is measuring, the machine is beeping, I am straining my ears over the piped, chill out music to hear the magical moment the heart beat appears, that I have read so much about, one woman said she could see hers but not hear it so maybe that's what will happen...45 seconds has passed...deep breaths. Again, the screen swings round and everything looks so different, my uterus is twice the size and the grey blob looks like two grey blobs on top of one another and the bottom one is flickering. Dr P is talking about such and such weeks and so many millimetres but I can't hear anything I'm just waiting for him to say 'heart beat' and he does as he points to the flicker. I feel relief, breifly, no tears of joy no elation, just that right now today, I'm pregnant but why the hell am I spotting?

I manage to eat something in this brief window of relief and N tells me a friend has offered him a free holiday in the Maldives as his wife can't go. I say of course that's fine. I would go if I could and if all this work out N's responsibilities could be so different this time next year and I know he would want me to go if it were the other way round.