One beautiful heartbeat!

We had our first ultrasound appointment today.  The appointment was so early, it was still dark out with no hint of dawn yet.  I did this on purpose - knew I wouldn't be able to sleep last night and wanted to get in as early as possible to keep my anxiety down!  All went according to plan - I was still really nervous though and felt like I was going to puke from the time I woke up to when the ultrasound tech and doctor came in to the room.

I did my ultrasound locally even though my clinic is in Chicago.  It was the same deal as when I was doing the daily monitoring during the stim phase of my cycle.  They do the ultrasound, take screen shots, measure some things, and send the report to my doctor in Chicago for him to look at, then he calls later in the day to review the findings and give instructions.  Anyway, so I think I wrote the other day that I was nervous that the ultrasound tech was going to hide the results from us.  LOL!  Sometimes they do do that though.  But not today.  An actual doctor accompanied the tech today which was so nice to get an actual doctor's opinion right off the bat!  We did a transvaginal ultrasound which is usual for this early in a pregnancy and they found the yolk sac right away.  Then after a couple seconds the doctor said "oh and there's the heartbeat!"  Huge rushing waves of relief washed over us as we saw what he was pointing to on the monitor.  The tech flipped a switch and suddenly we heard "GUHshhGUHshhGUHshh"!  It was the heartbeat!  Hubby and I lost it then and both started crying - it was just so beautiful!  After the fact we realized that we should have used one of our phones to record it - but oh well.  We both were not thinking about anything else at the time.  The baby is measuring right on track at 5.4mm (the size of a lentil) and the heart rate is a healthy 124bpm!

I found this chart on the web that shows the progression of the fetal heartbeat:

Age	Normal Fetal Heart Rate
5 Weeks (Beginning)	80-85 bpm
5 Weeks	starts at 80 and ends at 103 bpm
6 Weeks	starts at 103 and ends at 126 bpm
7 Weeks	starts at 126 and ends at 149 bpm
8 Weeks	starts at 149 and ends at 172 bpm
9 Weeks	155-195 bpm (average 175 bpm)
12 Weeks	120-180 bpm (average 150 bpm)

So I'm right on track for 6w3d!  The baby's heart rate will start out slow when it first starts beating, will get faster as the weeks progress and then will start to slow down after week 9-10.  Also our chances of miscarriage just decreased to 5-10% by hearing a healthy heartbeat! 

I can now say that I am "clinically pregnant"!!