A new doctor and a "graduation"

February 3rd came around, and I was still on bed rest. Nothing new had come up as far as symptoms, but they wanted to be careful. I was throwing up just about everything I put in my mouth (except chocolate milk, most days) and I still felt very light headed and weak when I did much of anything.

I had my first appointment with my actual OB (who was actually brand new to me because of a switch in insurance) and I was nervous. I had called Kaiser, my new insurance, and told them I needed to schedule an appointment because I was pregnant. Didn't get into the details yet of the surrogacy, just needed to be seen. They just put me on whoever's schedule they could to get me in. Dr. Lewis was that person.

I was nervous when I got to the clinic, I'd never had Kaiser before and had heard mixed reviews from people in the past. I thought their whole institution felt like a cult, even when I was at the clinic. That place was HUGE and there was a section in the building for just about everything. It was like a hospital, basically, only seemed even bigger.

First impression of Dr. Lewis was fine, other than my whole life I'd only seen female OB's, and he was certainly not female. I think that was what I was most nervous about. They did a bedside ultrasound as they called it, on the tiniest little ultrasound machine I'd ever seen, and verified that there were still two heartbeats. I think Dr. Lewis was more excited to see the twins than I was, probably because I'd been seeing them a lot with all the ultrasounds at ORM. Not that I wasn't excited, he just acted like it was the coolest thing ever. (Should have been warning sign number one. Doesn't he see this more than I do????)

They did a pap test just to have one on Kaiser's medical record for me, and also ordered a "real" ultrasound for the next week. He said he'd also like to do a glucose screening while I was here next week (way earlier than I remembered being done with my first pregnancy) but he said it was important to check it early with twins. Fair enough.

He didn't make any determination of me being on bed rest still or not, as Carrie and Dr. Bankowski at ORM still had orders for that anyway. Back home I went.

On February 8th, I had my ultrasound at Kaiser but the tech didn't really get the best view of the twins because my bladder wasn't full. My sarcastic attitude wanted to say, well I can't keep ANYTHING down even water, what do you expect?? Instead I said, sorry and left it at that. From what I could see on the ultrasound, though, there wasn't a sign of any tear. Good news!

The next day, on the 9th I had my last and final appointment with ORM for a blood draw. I talked to Carrie about how I'd been feeling, MISERABLE, and how I'd actually lost 5 pounds to date. She wasn't pleased to hear that and said that with twins they want me to have gained 20 pounds by 20 weeks pregnant. I was 11 weeks at this point and down 5 pounds... and there was NO way I was going to gain 20 pounds PLUS make up the 5 I'd already lost in the next 9 weeks. And, being honest, as I usually am, that seemed PRETTY EXCESSIVE to me. If I gained 20 pounds by 20 weeks, likely I would gain about 60 for the whole pregnancy just because of the rapid weight gain near the end of pregnancy when the babies are growing the most. I kind of took what she said with a grain of salt. I had been trying everything I could to not be sick, but the Zofran they gave me just wasn't helping anymore. We would see where I was in 9 weeks and if it matched up to their "hopes" of weight gain. All I really wanted was to not be sick. That was my biggest hope.

I was officially graduated from ORM and would see my normal OB until the twins arrived. It seemed so weird that it was my last appointment, we had been through so much together and I loved the staff at ORM, even with the confusion at times, I would certainly miss them.