Penny

Okay, so I lied in today's journal entry when I said nothing special was going to happen. The nurse practitioner brought in a hand-sized plastic doohickey with a wand and shoved the wand into my stomach until I thought she was trying to give me a new navel.

And then we heard it.

SWOOSH-whish-SWOOSH-whish-SWOOSH-whish-...

The heartbeat.

It was very fast, nearly double a normal adult rate. We heard it for maybe half a dozen beats and the baby squirmed out of the way. The nurse practitioner gave me another navel somewhere else.

SWOOSH-whish-SWOOSH-whish-SWOOSH-whish-...

I could actually hear the thump of a full-grown heart very faintly under the swooshy noise for just a moment.

It was almost enough to make up for the lab nurse who couldn't find my vein.