delicate - jaylor fanfic - on hold because of the breakup

doctors and watermelon

** Friday September 9th - ten weeks pregnant **

- Taylors Pov -

I have another ultrasound today and I'm nervous. Not because I think it will hurt, I know that I now will get the thing over my belly rather than the metal dildo thing, but I'm still nervous. Something could have gone wrong since the last checkup. Isn't there a million things that could go wrong during a pregnancy? I wouldn't be surprised If something were wrong. Things seem to be messy in my life recently so another addition to that wouldn't be a surprise that's for sure.

"Are you ready to leave?" Joe says through my bedroom door where I'm getting ready. "Yeah, one sec and I'm ready to go" I call through the door. He is coming with me today and its comforting to not do it alone. It was scary to be there alone last time, some support from someone other than the doctor would be nice.

We arrive at the place, and I hold joes hand all the way into the doctor's office. I'm sure I'm cutting off his blood circulation at this point, but I'm so nervous.

"Taylor, it's good to see you again. And this must be the father, right? Joe" my OB-GYN dr Lancaster says when we sit down in her office. "Good to see you too, and this is the father yes" Joe and the doctor shake pleasantries too before we get down to business.

"So not every woman has a prenatal visit at 10 weeks, but since you are underweight and have been for a while before your pregnancy, I want to keep an extra eye on you to make sure everything is developing adequately. There are some risks to pregnancy when you are underweight, that's why we need to check up with you more" she says, and I nod. I don't mind extra visits if it means that the baby is taken care of.

I didn't fully realize that my weight was such a problem before I got pregnant. I guess I have surround myself with people that keep up an unrealistic picture of what a woman should look like, but in hindsight it only happens because they are starving themself. I'm not proud of it, but I got tips from Karlie that made me lose weight and keep it off in a way I haven't before, and then I was obsessed. It was something that made me feel better when things were chaotic, but now I see that it could really hurt my baby.

"There are some nutrients that's especially important that you add to your diet, in addition to taking the prenatal supplement. Folate and iron, as well as upping your DHA fat and protein intake. How have you been doing since the last checkup food wise?" She asks and I bite my lip. "I'm not sure. I guess I'm... coping? But it's hard to add stuff while at the same time easy because I know the baby needs it. I don't want my disorder to be something that eventually harms the baby, I couldn't forgive myself for that"

She comes with some suggestions about foods that I should keep adding, stuff that's high in folate and iron.

"I want to talk to you about something called Noninvasive prenatal testing. It's a simple blood draw we can do from 10 weeks pregnant and upwards to check for certain chromosome conditions, so the parents are prepared, as well as tell the gender of the baby earlier than you could with an ultrasound. It's perfectly safe and the results would be ready within a couple of weeks. If the result is positive for a condition, it's not completely conclusive and we would offer follow-up diagnostic testing" apparently the test is very accurate, but we are also to be mindful that a "normal" result doesn't equal a healthy baby and an "abnormal" result doesn't definitively mean the baby has a certain condition.

"Can I ask how the test works?" I ask and she nods. "We do the blood draw which is then sent to a lab for analysis. the test counts fragments of DNA from your placenta that's circulating in your blood, so that means your blood contains cells from both you and your pregnancy. These fragments are free-floating rather than wishing a cell, so they are called cell-free DNA. we take that test and look at the chromosomes, which is the parts of the cells that contain genes, where we can then tell if your baby is more likely to have a certain disorder. Normally there are two copies of a chromosome. If one of them pairs have an extra chromosome it's what we call a trisomy. And also by examining the chromosomes we can also tell what the sex of the sex of the baby is. That's something you can decide for yourself if you want to know though"