Ultrasounds and Falling in Love

I ate lunch with a friend over the weekend who said she was considering asking her doctor not to let her see her baby at her first ultrasound.

I think it's a valid request. Believe it or not, you fall in love with that little being when you see it for the first time.

I remember telling Jake early on in my pregnancy that if something were to go wrong with our baby and I were to miscarry I wanted it to be before my eight week appointment. It wouldn't be as hard on me if I never saw the baby in the first place. I can't tell you how many times I have cried to Jake, or have thought to myself over the last month, "I wish I had never seen it."

And now that I've had some time to think it over, it's not that I wish I had never seen the baby. It was really a miraculous moment. I hope someday I can get to the point where I think of it fondly instead of bursting into tears like I do now when I think about it. I just wish, seeing as how things turned out, that I miscarried before I got the chance to see the baby. Before I got the chance to fall in love.

After the visit with my friend I started thinking. If I get pregnant again do I want to ask the doctor not to let me see the baby at my very first chance?

My initial thought was yes. I don't want to experience that wonderful moment only to have my pregnancy bliss taken away from me again. I don't know if I could have my heart broken twice. There was a reason why doctors wouldn't let you see the baby so early in the past. They knew it would be harder on parents if their baby didn't make it through the first trimester when the chance of miscarriage is so much higher, and so common.

Then I thought about it a little bit more. If I had never gotten pregnant and a friend of mine miscarried then yes, I probably would ask not to see the baby on the ultrasound. I'd just want to be told everything looked okay. But I have been through the experience of seeing a baby, falling in love, and then miscarrying. That moment of seeing my baby for the first time, hearing it's heartbeat, and even seeing it's little heart beating, was one of the happiest moments of my life. Not seeing our next baby won't make make another miscarriage any less harder on me. A second one would be so much harder on me anyway. My heart will be broken either way.
I think I'd do it again.