I am usually on time, but this time it is late by 10 days. Both of us were excited
although we didn’t proceed to confirm it ourselves. When we were thinking about going
to the Women’s Health Center, Sathish had to go to India on an urgent business visit and
hence I decided to wait till he came back to Los Angeles, where we live now.
December 26, 2001
Sathish came back from India. We went to the Women’s Health Center attached to
Kaiser Permanente Hospital and I was tested positive for pregnancy. Our joy knew no
bounds. The nurse there was the first person to congratulate us and after lotttttttts
of paper work, made an appointment for me with Ms. Felicia Adiel on 28th Dec ‘01,
a certified nurse midwife at the Kaiser Permanente hospital in West LA.
Following that I had to go to the Clinical Laboratory for numerous blood and urine tests.
Both of us are very religious and God fearing. We thanked the Almighty and thought to
ourselves - what a nice way to celebrate the forth-coming New Year. We also decided to
divulge this good news to our parents, on New Year’s day.
December 28, 2001 - First Ultrasound Scan
However this ecstasy "seemed" to be ephemeral, when we went to meet Ms. Felicia Adiel.
This was my first pre-natal visit. Everything was new to me. My weight was checked and
blood pressure monitored. These readings were made a note of, in my pre-natal chart.
A urine test was done to check for the presence of protein. I was told that these would be
a routine at every pre-natal appointment.
Ms. Adiel did some initial physical examination, went over the results of the tests with
us and prescribed iron tablets (Ferrous Sulphate) for me, as I was anemic. I was also
advised to take pre-natal vitamins as a supplement.
The next part of the appointment was my first ultrasound scan. Ms. Adiel was mentioning
that we could see the baby’s heart beat. We were so excited and went into the ultrasound
scanning room. The lights were switched off and Ms. Adiel performed the scan. To our
dismay, she could not detect the heartbeat. She called for an obstetrician -
Dr. Lawrence Lurvey, who came in and repeated the whole procedure, but all in vain.
Dr. Lurvey mentioned that he could only see an empty sac and could not detect
any heartbeat. We were completely disheartened at not being able to see the heart beat.
But Dr. Lurvey was very optimistic. He tried to explain that it could be too early to see
the beat and that this happen often times. It was easy for him to say this, as he is so used
to seeing this everyday - but wasn’t easy for us to endure the same. He tranquilized us and
recommended that we wait for two weeks, before we went ahead with anything else.
My next appointment was given for 11th Jan '02.
Dr. Lurvey was so cheerful and congenial in talking to us that made us decide that he would
be my Obstetrician for this pregnancy journey, although Kaiser doesn’t guarantee that I
will be able to meet with the same obstetrician during every pre-natal visit.
With exiguous expectations, we returned home. However, Sathish was more confident than
I was. We decided to inform this to our parents, as I felt I would be more comfortable
taking to my mom.
First Ultrasound Picture
Here is the picture that we got from that ultrasound. The empty sac is seen in the middle
of the picture.
