Everyone kept assuring me that the midwife would be able to talk to me and answer all my questions; that she would help ease my mind about my lack of ms and other symptoms and would generally be friendly and useful. Well... First of all, they double booked my appointment, even though I made it over a month ago, so we had to wait in the waiting room for over an hour. Then, when we finally got in, she asked for my due date and I told her I only had the one I had guessed. She said that's OK, so I told her and she said, "So that makes you about 17 weeks then." I almost fell over. I even had thoughts that I could somehow have miscalculated by that much. I kind of stammered and hummed and hawed that I thought I was only 9 weeks. She looked at me funny and then realized that she had made a mistake and stared at me again, and said, "Why are you here? It is way too early to see anything." I was just stunned so I never managed to say that I was there because my GP had told to make the appointment and that I thought she was going to go over some of the basics of how my care would go from then on and then give me an opportunity to ask about general things, like my trip to Florida in Nov.

So then she told me to make an appointment for 6 weeks time (the practice can only make appointments a month in advance and I will be in Florida then anyway) and took my blood pressure and sent me on my way, no ifs, ands, or buts -- and no chance to ask any questions. I was furious. If that is all I am going to get from the midwife I don't want to see her again. I can get the nurse to take my blood pressure without having to wait an hour and I can't see what I have to gain from appointments like that. So I made an appt with my GP and I am going to ask him all the questions I couldn't ask before and ask whether I actually ever have to go back to the midwife again.

Then, this morning I got confirmation that the midwife was even more incompetent than I thought when I got a letter from my GP practice that during my recent appt I 'forgot' to sign a document and could I please come in to do that? Oh, I should add too, that the other thing the midwife banged on about was whether I had booked into the hospital. I don't quite know what that means in the UK English and said so, and instead of explaining what "booking in" means she wrote in my notes that I don't know whether I have been booked in or not. Then she wrote underneath the notes that my consultant had written, "Appears to have seen consultant on 24/9/99" DUH!!!

OK, enough about her -- on to my cool scan.

I finally got sick of not hearing anything from the fetal medicine guy and so we called the hospital to see what was up with the appointment. It turned out that there had been a mix up with who was supposed to let me know about the appointment and so I was never told and I missed it. However, they were really nice about it and told to come in the following morning (today). So I went in and the fetal medicine guy wasn't there, but his trusty (very nice this time) midwife was. She did a scan to look for the mysterious echo. She was extremely competent and this room for scanning was set up so that I had my own screen that I could see straight on and Jon was allowed in for the whole scan AND........... We got pictures!!!!!!

She was really nice and talked to us about everything, whereas the radiology people always whisper amongst themselves. She focused in on the baby for ages and we could see it wiggle and roll over. She couldn't see anything that resembled what the radiology people thought they saw. She thinks they might have just been looking at the yolk sac. Who knows. She saw one echo-y place outside the gestational sac which she thinks might be where the placenta is forming. She also saw a corpus luteum cyst on my right side (I thought I o'd on the left!) that is going away. All in all, it was great!! AND she said even though she didn't see anything, since I was scheduled to come in next in 2 weeks for another scan anyway and the fetal guy will be in then, she would cancel my appointment in radiology and reschedule me one in the nice room where Jon gets to come in and we get pictures. YEAH!!!!!

I am so much happier than I was. It was so wonderful to see such a squiggly little guy and to get piccies to cherish whenever I am feeling down. In an odd way I am really comforted that if anything goes wrong I have a concrete memory now of our little bean.

So, all in all, a very good day.

Lots of wonderful thoughts to all.

Kim and 'lil frankie'

PS. Frankie is now 36.5 mm from crown to rump and I have my first official due date -- May 16, 2000.