I knew I was probably jinxing things last week when I wrote about feeling good. The last few days have been especially brutal in the nausea department. I’ve been waking with massive nausea and if I can’t stay ahead of it with my Zofran, the nausea rarely gets better. At my appointment today with Dr. Risky I told her things had gone backwards. She wrote me a new prescription, so hopefully it will make a difference.

My check up today started pretty low-key. I arrived and managed to not vomit in the office, which was much harder than it sounds. Luckily my ketones were normal and I didn’t lose any weight! WOO! My blood pressure was on the low side, although I have a very low baseline blood pressure (85 over 50 is not unheard of for me) so Dr. Risky told me to monitor it on our home blood pressure machine. Our condo is practically a medical supply company.

We were ushered into an exam room with the nurse practitioner. She took out the Doppler and spent about five minutes looking for Binky’s heartbeat. She kept saying, “they’re slippery little ones in there, hard to find at this point,” which made me chuckle since I can find Binky’s heartbeat in about five seconds at this point. Of course, I have the added advantage of feeling where the baby is. After that, the nurse practitioner asked me if I was still having cramping. I told her that I was having cramping throughout the day, but it wasn’t consistent and I wouldn’t describe them as contractions. She wrote some stuff down and left.

Dr. Risky rushed in a few minutes later and immediately started quizzing me about my contractions. So I had to tell her that I would NOT call them contractions, just cramps. Nonetheless, the word contraction had entered her brain. She decided to give me an exam to check my cervix. NOOOOOOOOOOOOO.

While pelvic exams aren’t my most favorite thing in the world, they don’t bother me when I’m not pregnant. But when I AM pregnant? HOLY CRAP. I remember my former OB giving me one when I was pregnant with Madeline. It brought tears to my eyes and I remember gasping out to the doctor, “it NEVER hurts like this!” She told me that pregnancy increases sensitivity and she was definitely right. Even though Dr. Risky was extremely gentle, I still found myself clenching my fists and biting my lip. She also took a loooooong pause when she was checking my cervix and in those three seconds I had already mentally prepared myself for a cerclage (do yourself a favor and do NOT google image search cerclage, holy crap). Luckily everything was deemed perfect, and we were sent on our way.

It’s weird to leave Dr. Risky’s office without having seen Binky. After all my appointments, this is only the second time we’ve left empty-handed. And even though I can feel my little one moving around like crazy inside, I still have the terrible fear that this was the week something bad started, and we missed it.