24 Week Scan

At 24 weeks, a baby is considered 'viable'. What a horrible adjective. All that means is that, once you reach this milestone, if born early, the baby can be resuscitated at delivery and has at least a 50% chance of surviving. Not thriving or flourishing. Surviving.

Nevertheless, 24 weeks was my first milestone and today, I reached it. While I should have been celebrating this joyous moment, I cried nearly the entire way through my appointment.

The first part of the appointment was ultrasound. Only this time there didn't seem to be any, "Oh...look at its cute little face...let me print you a photo" comments. This time it was all business and all I did was study the sonographer's face for hints of trouble. Despite her telling me that everything looked fine, I honestly didn't believe her. I knew logically that if something was wrong, they would tell me. But that didn't help.

Although the doctors said I wouldn't need a vaginal ultrasound to check my stitch, I requested one anyway for peace of mind. I don't think many people go out of their way to have an ultrasound probe shoved up their vagina but hey, here we are.

After a quick meeting with the midwife we were joined by another doctor, additional to the ones I had met at my previous visits. His curly dark hair sat haphazardly on his forehead and his maroon pants and army green vest completed the picture. He sat close to me and while he spoke, I was distracted by his blue mask that kept slipping off his nose.

The doctor spoke directly about babies born at different gestational ages. It was nothing I didn't already know but still, it did nothing to comfort me. I wanted to celebrate reaching 24 weeks but all I could think about was how far I still had to go. Plus a passing comment of "We can scan you one day and have everything look perfect then you can go into pre-term labour two days later," did nothing to help the situation.

I left with a letter stating that it was best I didn't return to work and not much else. I had reached 24 weeks but it didn't feel as good as I'd hoped.