It’s not twins.

This is fine, you know; it actually is. Despite the sheer thrill and special-feelings if it had been, having twins would have inevitably been a much bigger challenge, particularly for first-time parents such as ourselves. Even before the birth, it would have raised the risk of miscarriage, raised the risk of requiring a C-section, lowered the average birth age by a month; it would have been cool in many ways, but I really can’t complain about having a single child to start with. I’ve been telling Christina for weeks now that our kid is going to be the best kid, which I do truly believe, and it would have been tough to force twins to share the superlative.

I have to admit, ultrasounds are still kind of confusing for me to interpret. The doctor seemed pretty confident as he swung the wand around: “Yup, there’s her bladder, there’s the uterus, here’s the amniotic sac, and that blob there is the embryo. Check it out: you can see the heart beating: Tiptiptiptiptip…”

Right now our kid still looks pretty much like a blob to me, but apparently it measures 10 mm from stem to stern now, and has a heartbeat racing along at around 160 beats per minute. That number is interesting because it’s my target heart rate when I’m doing moderate cardio at the gym; this kid is working at a pace that drenches me in sweat, all the time. Then again, I can’t be too surprised; it’s something like 6 times the mass it was last week.

And that’s it for this visit! The main takeaways were that everything is proceeding normally and looks good; by all measures, this is a safe, healthy pregnancy. I couldn’t ask for better news. There are details that I could quibble about--for example, it might be nice if Christina weren’t constantly nauseous--but even that is much better than if she were actually vomiting all the time.

Next visit comes in two weeks, when they perform the first trimester ultrasound screen, and discuss detailed screening options with us. We’re almost certainly going to go for additional screening to rule out genetic disorders, but with luck, we’ll be able to get one of the more modern tests that operates via a normal blood sample, instead of having to get in to get an amniotic fluid sample or a chorionic villus sample.

There’s a little bit of fear, still, that this testing will reveal a genetic disorder. The nightmare scenario is that something’s wrong which is not life-threatening, but would prevent this kid from ever living normally; in that case we’ll face a heartbreaking choice: whether or not to abort. Still, we should have excellent chances against that. At least the miscarriage rates for pregnancies that are healthy at this point are miniscule; I can pretty much stop worrying about that. In the meantime, I remain entirely optimistic that this little blob with a tiny, hard-working heart, is going to grow into the best kid. And why not? It’s got a wonderful woman for a mother, and a dad who is at least going to try pretty hard. I like those odds.