I worked myself up into a minor frenzy after Trusted Doc couldn’t find the heartbeat of the fetus this morning.

“It’s no reason to panic,” she said cheerfully. “It’s early, and it depends on how the uterus is tipped.”

I smiled tentatively.

“Normally, we’d just grab the ultrasound, but since you have an appointment for that this afternoon, we’ll just wait till then.”

Okay. Fine.

I took a deep breath and tried to go back to the happy moment, just ten minutes earlier, when I stepped on the scale to discover that I’d overshot my weight-gain estimate by seven pounds.

“It’s a miracle!” I told the nurse, who was more or less unphased by my temporary euphoria.

Luckily, when we went back for the ultrasound appointment, we discovered that the reason TD couldn’t find the heartbeat is that the fetus is hyperactive. Hyperactive and super huge. It’s growing fast. Every time they look at it, the due date gets closer and closer.

I would have had to call TD tomorrow to ask whether I should worry that the baby is growing too quickly, but luckily I remembered to chat about that with the ultrasound tech this afternoon after I was finished with my blood work.

“Because God forbid you’d leave the office without something to worry about,” Dan said, as the ultrasound tech’s laughter was ringing in our ears.