Like all newly pregnant women, Merav Ruthman counted down the days until her first doctor's appointment when she'd finally get to see her little one's heartbeat.

But when the doctor leaned over her during the eight-week appointment, she immediately knew something was wrong.

"Tell me what's going on, so I can make amends with it," the Lakeview woman remembers begging while the doctor stared at the ultrasound screen.

The doctor said there was no heartbeat, and no yolk inside the sack. He told her to come back in about a  week, leaving her with a few solemn words: a miscarriage is certain.

Ruthman scheduled a D&C and went home to wait for the inevitable. While she waited out the week until her next appointment, she continued taking her prenatal vitamins and refused to drink at her sister's baby's bris.

"I refused to hurt the fetus in case there was a possibility that I was still pregnant," she says.

Ruthman also decided to change doctors because her original doctor went on vacation shortly after giving her the bad news.

When she went in for her next-and seemingly final-appointment, the new doctor found Baby Haley's heartbeat immediately, and Ruthman had the uneventful pregnancy she'd dreamed about.

She chalks the initial misdiagnosis up to either a malfunction of the machine, a slightly crooked uterus or the incompetence of the doctor.

But it's not something she dwells on these days. She's just too busy chasing an active 1-year-old around the house.