Friday 8th March – Scans

I am hugely relived to say that our 12 week scan yesterday showed a growing Dumpling and a beating heart. Little monkey likes to sleep and if you try and get them to move, they roll over with their hand covering their face. Just like their Dad in a morning!

Anyway, the wait for this scan seemed to be the longest and hardest yet.

Like in the early days of my Sophia pregnancy, we went for a private reassurance scan, but the date the clinic gave was different by my reckoning by about 12 days. It doesn’t sound much, but when they say you’re 5 weeks and you thought you were nearly 7, it seems like a lot. It really made me worry. I thought that if the baby was that much smaller than my calculations (and it’s not likely that I was wrong), then it must be that the baby wasn’t growing properly. And so I really expected yesterday’s scan to result in ‘sorry, but baby stopped growing some time ago’.

Anyway, somehow, baby was lying the wrong way round at the first scan, or they’ve had a growth spurt, or whether my calculations aren’t quite on point (or a combination of all three!), and the new due date is much nearer to what I originally thought. We have to go back for another scan next week for them to get some more accurate measurements, but there’s no doubting that Dumpling is growing and kicking.

We’re gone for ‘Dumpling’ as a nickname because it begins with D, like Dino (who became Sophia). At one point when I was stressing about this big gap between how far along I thought I should be and how far along the first scan said I was, my Dad said ‘Dumpling will come when Dumpling is ready’ and it’s just stuck.

Most people don’t know yet, but some do. Obviously, our close family and friends are aware and so are my wardens and Standing Committee. I told the wardens because I wanted them to really think through whether or not they wanted to stand again this year, as it will inevitably mean more work, and our AGM, where we elect the wardens for the year, is fast approaching.

I told Standing Committee because I was somewhat overwhelmed by various difficult agenda items on Tuesday night, and as it was 2 days before the scan I was sure would hold bad news, I ended up crying at the meeting. Not my most professional moment, but I absolutely know I can trust them with how I am feeling, and they were nothing but wonderful.

So, scans! Hard to wait for, so far beautiful to see. Here’s to the next one in another couple of months time.