We walked into the ultrasound room, filled with a mixture of excitement and apprhension, hoping that our child would be viable. Lili lay down, and the technician got to work. “The jelly is warm!” Lili commented, pleasantly surprised that it wasn’t freezing cold. The first image of our child was projected on the screen before us, and we couldn’t stop smiling. One by one the technician catalogued the baby’s parts, their humeri, femurs, the valves of the heart, the fingers, the toes, the brain, the spine, and more–we got to see it all. Our hope bloomed and meshed with reality. The baby was fine. And wiggled a lot. It was positively magical to watch.

After the ultrasound, Sam could barely contain his excitement. After seeing his child for the first time, it was hard to accept having to wait another 20 weeks to meet them. Lili had to repeatedly remind him over the following days that if he got his wish of meeting the child this early, it would only be in DISASTROUS circumstances. They need more time, and will come when they will come, she said.

It was the middle of the night. Lili woke feeling… something. It was faint, barely there. She could have imagined it becuase she wanted to, but surely that wouldn’t have woken her. She lay there in bed, not waking Sam who was fast asleep, listening with every nerve in her body to see whether she’d feel it again. Eventually she fell back to sleep, excited to tell him what she’d felt first thing in the morning.

Lili had been nauseated and exhausted for weeks. Finally, at the end of a midwife appointment, the moment Sam and Lili had been eagerly awaiting had come. Lili laid on the exam table and the midwife started looking for the heartbeat with the doppler. It didn’t take her long, and there it was! 175 beats per minute of proof that we were well on our way to having our first kid. A quiet wooshing sound filled our ears. For the rest of the evening, Sam occasionally glanced at Lili, got a glint in his eye, and did his best (and quite good, according to Lili and Audrey) impression of the delightful sound.

Lili wakes from a dream that she’s just taken a positive pregancy test and can’t wait any longer. It’s 5am, and she doesn’t want to wake Sam yet, so she takes the test alone, only to come back loudly whispering “Sam! Sam!” with her phone light trained on the test. Sam groggily cracks his eyes open, confused by the early morning commotion. It takes him a full 5 seconds to realize what’s happening. With a grin, he flops back down, pulls Lili close, and says “I knew you were pregnant.”