A Womb with a View, Part 1

'For You formed my inward parts; You covered me in my mother's womb. I will praise You, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made; Marvelous are Your works, And that my soul knows very well. My frame was not hidden from You, When I was made in secret, And skillfully wrought in the lowest parts of the earth. Your eyes saw my substance, being yet unformed. And in Your book they all were written, The days fashioned for me, When as yet there were none of them. How precious also are Your thoughts to me, O God! How great is the sum of them!'  Psalm 139:13-17

This next installment is a little embyology lesson with visuals. First, though, I’ll give you a little background about me. When I was in 9^th grade, I was introduced to biology. I was a little leery of it at first, knowing that biology meant dissecting animals, but soon I realized that it was the most amazing subject I had ever studied. In my opinion anyway. I ate it up. I thought about a career in marine biology, but still was a little put off by the prospect of having to cut up an animal for research. I excelled in biology. I did so well in fact, my teacher had me take the Advanced Placement test in 9^th grade and I got a 93 on it! It just comes naturally to me. I’m not saying this to brag, but to help you understand me a little. I started college as an education major, having given up on pursuing a biological career and soon changed to a biology education major after taking a couple of college level biology courses. I continued with that and then changed to solely a zoology major and graduated with a BS in Zoology. My favorite subject in biology was embryology. It fascinates me. I even considered a career as an obstetrician. I didn’t want to be a gynecologist, but I wanted to go through pregnancy with women and deliver babies. One thing stopped me - c-sections. Again, cutting into another organism held me back. One of my favorite films is ‘The Miracle of Life’ By Lennart Nillson. Absolutely amazing. This is some of the reason why abortion seems so heinous to me. I have studied the development of a human being in the womb and seeing people take one of the most frequently occurring miracles we have and turn it into something monstrous is heart-wrenching.

I was given a rare and precious opportunity during my first pregnancy that I would like to share. At the time, I saw it as a gift to me as someone who loved seeing fetal development and somewhat the result of overcautious doctors. Now, I see it as an opportunity to share the development of a human being from a new vantage point.

Before my now 2 year old son was born, I could not wait to be pregnant. I had to wait longer than I had planned, so when the time came, I was on the ball. I had the timing down so well in my head that I knew I was pregnant before I even took the test (and I took that before my missed period). My indication of pregnancy was light spotting 4 days before I was supposed to start my period. Implantation spotting - the embryo had nestled itself in the lining of the uterus. I always get my period on day 28, so it implanted 24 days from the first day of my last period or 2 weeks after it was fertilized.  I took the test and it was positive. I called my doctor on Monday and went in for the blood test on Tuesday. The blood test confirmed the pregnancy. My doctor’s policy was for her patients to get a second blood test 48 hours later to test the viability of the pregnancy. Yay, I LOVE blood draws! (said with much sarcasm…). I had the second blood test on Thursday and the hormones had not doubled as they expected. So they sent me in, on a Saturday to get yet another blood test. On Monday I was informed that the hormone levels still had not doubled, so they were scheduling me for an ultrasound. Below is the picture of that ultrasound. I was 5 weeks pregnant, the baby was 21 days old.  It is a picture of a cell phone picture so it isn’t very clear, but within the large, black circle at the top is a small lighter spot jutting into it. That is the baby. At this point, he was about the size of an apple seed. We saw the heartbeat clearly. It looked like one of those cursors on an older computer, blinking very quickly. We were thrilled! The pregnancy was viable and we were on our way to having our first baby. I will end here for now. My next entry will continue on the journey and will document the next ultrasound or two that we experienced.