Second ultrasound

Thank God, all is still good.

I haven't been blogging much, since there's really not all that much to talk about. Constipation finally let up today (I think it took a combo of prunes, more fruit juice, and anxiety about U/S #2 to get rid of it) - thanks for all the tips. I think I'll have to try the tomato juice, which will also help me get more fruit & veg servings in each day. I occasionally feel a little icky, then I eat, and usually feel a lot better. I'm often very tired, but have trouble figuring out if it's due to the two-hour commute on top of my new job, or is it due to the baby.

Here's bean at 9w4d, measuring 2.6cm (9w3d), with a lovely FHR of 175/min. It was moving its little limb buds lots, which was amazing to see. Thankfully my favourite ultrasound tech was the one doing my scan today, and she let DH come in with me. She told us (against the rules which say they're not allowed to tell us anything) within 20 seconds that things looked good, did her measurements, and then turned the screen to show us our little baby doing its thing. We even got two similar profile shots to take home with us:

In other news, the new job is going well. Some days are really tiring, other days aren't too bad. The days with 2-3 longer (3 hour) cases are much more relaxing, so I really enjoy the days I get to do the laparoscopic gastric bypasses for the morbidly obese. Those are a little more challenging at the start, but once they get things underway, I can chill out, surf the net a little, and catch up on email. I probably shouldn't tell people that anesthetists don't always spend every second of the day staring at the vital signs on the screen, should I? After all the years of training, I can multitask pretty well though. It only takes the slightest change in pitch or rate of the pulse oximeter sound (measures the level of oxygen in the blood) for me to know if the patient's heart is slowing or speeding up, or if the oxygen level is falling. I can't imagine practicing anesthesia 20-30 years ago before all the fantastic monitoring equipment available now was introduced.

The days with many short cases (like an Ear-Nose-Throat list with a bunch of tubes for kid's ears, then a bunch of tonsils, all of which take 30-45min each) are really tiring. There's a lot of running around, and barely enough time to record the vitals and the drugs I gave before the case is done, and it's off to recovery room and to the waiting area to see the next patient.

I am getting more confident of working on my own with each passing week, which is nice. 5 years of training after med school and passing a brutal licensing exam ought to have been enough to reassure me, but somehow it's different being out there and working all on my own.

Thanks to everyone who has posted a comment to me, even when I'm not posting all that much myself. It's so nice to know that people understand what I'm going through, and to get helpful advice rather than assvice. :)