Was anyone else super terrified/paranoid before your wife's first ultrasound?

Yes.

Nope

Yep, completely normal to have those feelings. Even more so if you had difficulty conceiving.

It doesn't get easier after the first ultrasound either. Each and every visit brings new worry and concern.

Good luck. If you're a man of faith, don't stop praying, until you're holding that baby!

Congratulations!

my wife is 22 weeks pregnant. at her 13 week ultrasound, our baby was too large to do the screening tests. the maternal fetal medicine doc went through the statistics for something to be really concerned about (trisomies 21 and 18 and a few other things), and with low risk pregnancies it is ~1 in 1000 births that end up having a serious problem.

provided you and your wife have no other risk factors (i think i remember questions about previous pregnancies, abortions, but it could be other things), i don't think you have much to worry about. definitely a crazy experience.

guy who enjoys lakes wrote:

my wife is 22 weeks pregnant. at her 13 week ultrasound, our baby was too large to do the screening tests. the maternal fetal medicine doc went through the statistics for something to be really concerned about (trisomies 21 and 18 and a few other things), and with low risk pregnancies it is ~1 in 1000 births that end up having a serious problem.

provided you and your wife have no other risk factors (i think i remember questions about previous pregnancies, abortions, but it could be other things), i don't think you have much to worry about. definitely a crazy experience.

Thanks a lot man. And thanks a lot to the previous poster about praying for my unborn child, I always do! Continually.

We're both very healthy. No previous pregnancies. She actually conceived four days after our wedding. The last two months or so are just like a surreal dream lol.

Thanks again for the encouraging words. I think the stats are certainly in our favor, in any event.

Just went through this, wife is half way there. You will be fine, just relax everything will turn out ok.

There was a time when the baby was just delivered without ultrasounds/tests/etc. You will be fine. congrats

You did what billions of billions have done in the past, you didn't pull out. You have a spawn, I couldn't sleep either.

If you are crapping your pants already, it's the first sign that you are going to be a decent dad. Oh, and get used to that feeling. It's now part of who you are.

Hey, thanks man!

Good sign wrote:

If you are crapping your pants already, it's the first sign that you are going to be a decent dad. Oh, and get used to that feeling. It's now part of who you are.

Just wait until you go for the ultrasound to see the gender.

Everybody worries. Just make sure you keep it in check and don't let it rule the pregnancy. As the Dad, you will find that it is your job to be the cool cucumber in the room. Women get nuts during pregnancy and can be even worse after when hormones go haywire. Key is to be flexible and ready to go with anything. Some old Asian dude once said: The green reed which bends in the wind is stronger than the mighty oak which breaks in a storm.

On your way to becoming a Real Man. Congrats.

12 replies and no one has said it yet..LRC is slipping.

This thread is useless without pics (of your wife, not you)

I have three kids ( the oldest is 21) and we never even let them do an ultra sound on any of them. We didn't know the sex, if they were "all right", or anything. Everything worked out fine.

We figured we weren't aborting them if there was something wrong, so there was no point in blasting them with ultrasound.

The old fashioned way wrote:

We figured we weren't aborting them if there was something wrong, so there was no point in blasting them with ultrasound.

Total respect and understand this concept, but while considering this idea I came to the conclusion that it is better (for me) to know if there are going to be any abnormalities in order to prepare for them rather than go into them blind. There was never a thought of abortion or adoption or anything else like that - just being prepared.

As for advice for the OP - just finishing up my first and this feeling does not go away. There is always something else to learn and understand along the way, so just be flexible along the way. To echo the two most important things that I read from earlier posters: 1) If you have these feelings it is a great sign you will be a great dad. Simply put, it shows you care. 2) It is okay for you to have these feelings and ask questions about these worries or nerves, but your wife is going to be on so many hormones and emotions that you need to be the cognizant one. Ask the proper questions, understand the full situation before jumping to conclusions, and be as calm under the stress as possible. One of the more dangerous things to your unborn child is the mother's stress so you need to mitigate it, not add to it.

Congrats on the addition and good luck! Judging by the current responses, you are not alone on this board, so if anything else comes up this seems like an alright place to come and ask questions - never thought I'd say that about LRC...

My son is 9 months old now but the ultrasounds definitely scared the crap out of me. It wasn't so much that I thought they were going to find something wrong as it was "holy crap, this is really happening!"

Once he came out, the first two months were rough but it got much better after that.

Yes, we were both terribly nervous for our first ultrasound, then we found out we were having twins and I was so stunned I couldn't put words together for about 45 seconds.

Get used to the worrying. It means you care but it also never goes away. Good luck!

Distance Fan wrote:

Yep, completely normal to have those feelings. Even more so if you had difficulty conceiving.

It doesn't get easier after the first ultrasound either. Each and every visit brings new worry and concern.

Good luck. If you're a man of faith, don't stop praying, until you're holding that baby!

Congratulations!

Of course, after you have that baby in hand, the praying will have only just begun.

I wasn't nervous at all before our first ultrasound, then they did the ultrasound and told us we were having identical twins (which is the one thing they got right), and my wife started hitting me. Then they freaked us out by telling us they were cojoined (which they weren't), they were momos (which they weren't, they were actually dimos), that one was at high risk for downs while the other was not (which neither one had downs and is almost statistically impossible). Later in the pregnancy, one thing they didn't diagnose that is usually fatal that we discovered when they did lab work on the placenta after the birth was that they had twin to twin transfusion. Anyhow, the moral of the story is the doctor / ultrasonographer will always tell you worst case scenario in order to cover themselves from being sued, so make sure you do your own research and get a second opinion from a perinatologist if they start freaking you out as many of the measurements they take have a degree of operator error. If you do end up with twins, you will get to spend a lot of time looking at ultrasounds (once every two weeks early on and once a week later in the pregnancy). Being a father is a great(yet stressful) experience and I am a proud to report that I am a dad to two smart, beautiful, healthy, athletic identical twin girls who defy statistics each and every day.

Forget ultrasounds I wasn't stupid enough to get married.