Once we found out we were pregnant, we sceduled our first doctor's appointment down in Roseau with Dr. Ferreira on February 15th at 11 am. We awaited this appointment for so long, just for some confirmation that the baby was healthy and growing well and to get some information from about the next couple of months. We knew we did not want to tell our immediate families until we had the clearance from the doctor.We had originally planned to wake up early on the 15th and drive to and from Rouseau, which is an hour away, that day but Emmet switched it up on me lovingly.
On Feb 14th, he came to visit me on my lunch break at work and told me that he had gotten us a room at the Fort Young Hotel in the capital city of Dominica, Rouseau. He said that we would be leaving right after work at 3:00 and that we would just run home to grab an overnight bag and go. I was so surprised and so excited to get away for the night, especially since my first experiences with morning sickness had struck me that weekend and I had been too sick to go out to dinner on our scheduled Valentine's Day dinner date that past Saturday.
We took a bumpy transport down and arrived at the hotel around 4:30. The bed was decorated with heart shaped towels sculptures and there were flower petals sprinkled all over the room. It felt like an episode of the Bachelor. I was in heaven. The hotel gave us some cold fruit juice and Emmet and I enjoyed it out on the balcony. Then we took a swim in the infinity pool overlooking the Caribbean Sea and looking down south at the view toward Scott's Head. Maybe even better than the view and the atmosphere was the cable and the flat screen TV in our hotel room, on which we watched 3 episodes of our old favorite show on the travel channel, "No Reservations" with Anthony Bordain.
The amazing thing about the holiday, believe it or not, was yet to come. We woke up on Tuesday morning, well rested and went to the doctor. He gave me a thorough check-up and told us our due date was September 27th. He said that I had a very healthy heart and that he wanted to take an ultrasound to get a good picture of the baby. We had been hoping he would say that because, of course, we wanted to take a peek, too.
We went downstairs and had our ultrasound done by a Cuban radiologist with very little personality. But no one could ruin this for us. With the little English she had, she moved the device around and finally said, "Bebe." And there on the flat screen TV zoomed in was our little bean, a white blinking life with a heartbeat of 133 beats per minute. It was the most incredible thing we had ever experienced in our lives. There was definitely a baby inside of me, and it was implanted right where it needed to be.
The day was complete with a shopping trip to the only normal grocery store on the island, Save A Lot, where we stocked up on everything salty and crunch and two gallons of fresh milk. We rode home to Portsmouth, happier than I could ever describe with a black and white picture of our tiny child in Emmet's backpack beside us. I think it's safe to say that it was the best Valentine's Day I've ever had. Below are some pictures from the hotel room.
