Big grins all round...

Getting your stuff ready to go for a scan, if it's 90 minutes away, is a fine art. First there are knickers you don't mind losing, then enough books (and lightweight enough) to read when you're both dying to pee, and potentially going mad waiting for a decision to be made. Then there's "do I take overnight stuff". I took my contact lens case and toothbrush, as years of travelling experience leads me to have two sponge bags ready packed at all times - the mini one, with the lens and tooth stuff, and the big one, with the soap/shampoo/hairbrush etc.

But in the event my pessimism was not needed. As you can see, all were happy, including the nice doctor (the one I've seen twice before, and Mr. Spouse once, when we were there in January. She was crying that time, in sympathy with us.
Me: I wish they'd wear name badges, so I'd have better chance of remembering her name.
Him: She was.
Me: So what's her name then?
Him: I forget.
We were too busy looking happy, I think.

Anyway we saw and (pretty much immediately) heard the heartbeat, saw a vague shape of embryo, which measures 7w2d but the doctor says not to worry as there's a large margin of error. It measured 11.1mm and clearly just 0.1mm off would be easy to do, but would make at least a couple of days' difference. I reckon I am 7w5 to 7w6 by when I ovulated so I will try not to fret about that. I did give in to temptation and look up my official due date, which should have been December 29th, so I reckon this would be a January delivery, realistically. And we now have about a 90% chance of having one, by my guesstimation.

The radiographer (50-ish, male - I didn't know they made male radiographers) referred to it as a foetus and we were also later directed to the fetal (sic - despite this being the UK) medicine centre so although I think it is technically still an embryo, that also makes it seem a bit more real. The fetal medicine centre visit was to book in for a nuchal translucency scan and combined blood test thingy. We feel that if there is to be not-so-good news, we would like to know sooner, even if we are pretty sure we won't want to do an invasive test, or terminate except in the case of an abnormality incompatible with life (and we also discussed this case). I had been ruminating on this for a few days and it all came out in an incomprehensible rush (rather like the tax information Mr. Spouse was trying to send me to sleep with last night) but I think we are now on the same page. I think we always were, actually. It is partly personal conviction, partly history - at the moment we feel like we would rather have a baby, and child, with some problems than no baby, or child, at all.

So this afternoon we went to the seaside! In fact, to a gorgeous Victorian town which, local legend has it, was visited briefly by Napoleon, and on which he modelled Paris' main streets. Well, that's what they say. For more information, read the hilarious Lancashire, Where Women Die of Love. We had a slightly substandard pub lunch, and then wandered around the continental market, clearly laid on specifically for us, and enjoyed the fine weather, ditto.

Then home, where I have just come off the phone to my mum - who on being told the news, squealed for about five minutes. She is going to come to my next scan (1st June) as Mr. Spouse is getting to the stage where he will have to take unpaid days off to come with me. She was clearly delighted, not only at the news and the invitation to hold my hand, but also at the chance to get out of something her fellow retirees had signed her up for that she didn't fancy. I swear, she's busier than me. She again bent my ear about my brother's parenting skills (or lack thereof - I better measure up to her idealisation of me, is all I can say!), but seemed a bit more positive about them than recently (long story).

I'm just going to remind Mr. Spouse that he said he'd cook something for me, as I need to eat but can't face the kitchen...