Ambiguous News

Finally, a good profile picture of the little guy!

Love how his little hand is curled up by his face...

Today was the "re-check" ultrasound, because he was in a funky position last time, and just a little too small for them to see everything they wanted, like the fingers, the toes, the four chambers of the heart, the spine...

The good news is, they found everything they needed this time, he's still a boy :D - and I got video. The bad news is, either the software or the USB cord isn't working to transfer it to the computer, so I can watch it, but you can't! Wahhh!

The ambiguous news... our little guy has a very teeny tiny slight curve in his spine. There's no evidence of spina bifida, or a neural tube defect or anything like that. His mobility isn't effected, and there are no other defects that they can find in the heart, brain, etc.

Of course, all the literature I can find on the Internet conflicts, and varies from: "We conclude that abnormal spinal curvature in the fetus is a significant finding, whether mild or severe" to "Spinal curves are relatively common in the general population. Most curvatures are mild to moderate, while only a small percentage severe enough to warrant treatment."

So reassuring.

Not.

I don't know if the OB is going to want follow-up ultrasounds but my guess is that he is. *sigh* What I hate is not knowing for sure. And I'm having flashbacks of my pregnancy with Blake, where they found his kidney "slightly enlarged" at sixteen weeks. The cascade of interventions that followed, including an ultrasound every four weeks after that, an amniocentesis at 38 weeks to check lung maturity, and an induction soon after... ugh. Just the thought of it makes me want to cry.

And of course, there was all the awful, painful testing afterward, to find out that nothing was wrong with him at all...

This is what happens, I guess, when you open Pandora's box.

The doc who came in said, "I can't guarantee anything, but this seems very slight, and there are no other indicators. My guess is that some day he'll get an x-ray and say, 'Hey, mom, did you know I have a slight curve in my spine?'"

We can hope, I suppose, but in the mean time, I'm hormonal...and except for that perfectly rounded string of pearls without a little dip in the middle, I don't know the difference between what's normal and isn't - and when you mention "spine" and "abnormality" in the same sentence, a pregnant woman has a tendency to panic...

So I'm trying not to look at this as bad news, but rather... ambiguous news. We don't really know. Could be something. Could be nothing.

Unfortunately, you can't shut Pandora's box. Once it's open, you just have to live with it.

Sometimes I think denial isn't such a bad thing after all.

Let's Talk About Sex

The sex of our baby is......

(You did realize I was talking about that kind of sex, right? )

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A BOY!

 

 

I thought for sure we were having a girl. My pattern so far has been girl, boy, girl, boy... so I was in line for a girl. And we both wanted a boy, so that, of course, meant for sure it would be a girl...

But it's A BOY!

Now to go break Zoe's heart and tell her it's not a sister...

*sigh*

Oh, and I have to go back in ten days, because I'm 18w2d and they couldn't see as much as they wanted and baby was being VERY obstinate about position (he was breech and comfy and not moving thankyouverymuch!)

So more pictures and a video next time!

psst... did I mention? It's  A BOY!

Results

We had an OB appt today and I finally got my official nuchal scan u/s results back - my risk of having a baby with Downs Syndrome went from 1 in 113 to 1 in 2241, and my risk of having a baby with trisomy 13/18 went from 1 in 201 to 1 in 4001. 

Whew!

Also heard the heartbeat... the midwife couldn't find it last week, but we heard it galloping along just fine today. And we set up my anatomy ultrasound at 18 weeks - two weeks earlier than I expected.

I think we've decided to find out the gender. The kids are fighting over which they want - brother or sister - and I think getting the disappointment over now is better than waiting until the baby's actually here, kwim?

So we'll know what we're having in four more weeks...

Secret Gender

When I was a kid, I always hunted for and found my Christmas presents.

I've never been big on surprises. Most of the time, to me, surprises have been pretty disappointing. I like anticipation, but only when I know WHAT is coming. I like seeing the light at the end of a tunnel, and already knowing that it's not a train!

So the decision to keep the gender of this baby a surprise was a tough one for me. But my first was a surprise. My ex wanted a girl, and I did, too, and that's just what she was, but we didn't know until the moment she arrived. Granted, the OB announced it, and they whisked her away to the warming table to be suctioned, and I didn't see her for a while. 

But it was a surprise. 

We didn't want to know the sex of our second baby, either, but when the tech asked and I told her no, we didn't know to know, she mouthed the word, "Boy!" to the other tech... and Pandora's box was open.

So resisting the temptation with baby number three and four was just too difficult. And Michael wanted to know, too, so I figured, why not? People could buy us gender-specific things (and since it had been so long since I'd had a baby, I had no baby things left!) which they were begging to do...

But I was going to stick to my guns with this baby. It was going to be a surprise, no matter how tempting it was to find out at that twenty-week ultrasound. A nice bookend to my first pregnancy.

Now I'm re-thinking that, but it's not my curious-kitty instincts that are changing my mind. What I didn't count on were the other kids having very strong preferences for one gender or the other. Zoe wants a sister. She very adamantly wants a sister. And Dmitri wants a brother. And they are fighting about it constantly, which gender it is, and who's going to get what.

I'm trying to imagine the disappointment and resentment - inevitable, with one, if not the other - at the birth. That's gonna suck. It should be a joyful time, and I really don't want to have to console a first-grader because the baby isn't the gender they wanted. *sigh*

So, selfishly, I'm wondering if I should just find out now, and tell them so they can get the disappointment over with, and then get used to having either a brother or a sister? That way, there will be no big surprises for them at the birth. They'll already know if we're welcoming Luke or Lucy... 

I suppose it makes the most sense. And hey, I love finding out secrets. I'm fourteen weeks today, so that ultrasound is six weeks away. I still have time to consider and think about it.

But I think I'm now leaning toward finding out.

Expired Eggs?

So, when we went to the OB (yes, we went to an OB... *gasp* But only so I can get some tests done I want that insurance will pay for... ;) ) he made a comment about my eggs. 

Granted, I said something first. I mentioned that I wanted the first trimester screen for Trisomy disorders (13, 18, Down's Syndrome, etc.) because at 38 (39 by the time this baby is born) my eggs are just a little past their expiration date. 

He nodded and said, "I always tell my patients, you've had those eggs since you were born! Would you eat eggs that were 38 years old?"

Okay, first of all... dude, no one gets to make comments about my eggs but me.  Got it? That's like a direct reference to a woman's age, which, at mine, just isn't cool. Secondly... who would EAT human eggs!? Like, what, they're some strange sort of caviar!? That brings up some twisted horror cannibalism thing I don't even want to think about... eww!

But I digress. The OB and I had a little discussion about birth, I refused a pelvic or pap (just had a pap back in January, I'm good, thanks!) and although the nurse looked at me like I had three heads and kept trying to get me to strip for her and put on the little paper dress (three times! She came back three times! lol) the doc was okay with my refusal. 

The important this is he ordered my test and we went and saw the baby. Again. Looks more like a baby now than a blob, which was nice to see. But again, my knowledge of birth and all that "doctorin' stuff" irked someone. 

The u/s results themselves came out fine... from everything I could discern. They didn't check a lot of the soft markers I thought they should have, but the nuchal space wasn't measuring abnormal, so that's good, and we did see a nasal bone.

If you don't know anything about the new first trimester screen for genetic issues, the ultrasound portion is called the "nuchal translucency scan." Basically, they're checking a space behind the baby's neck to see if it's swollen. They've discovered that a majority (1 in 4) babies with a trisomy disorder will have a swollen nuchal space. They also check other things - like the appearance of a nasal bone. Down's Syndrome babies often don't have one that appears between the 11-13th week (when they do this test) but you can normally see the nasal bone in babies without a trisomy disorder. There are other soft markers they look for (echogenic bowel, cysts in the brain, etc.) as well, and they also do a blood test to check both HCG and PAPPA in the mother's blood. They put it all together and give you a risk factor for giving birth to a child with a genetic disorder.

I probably wouldn't have even considered this test, if I didn't know how exponentially the odds go up of having a child with a trisomy disorder after the age of thirty-five. You can see, on this table, how the risks go up.

Age (years)	Frequency of Fetuses with Down Syndrome to Normal Fetuses at 16 weeks of pregnancy	Frequency of Live Births of Babies with Down Syndrome to Normal Births
15 - 19	----	1 / 1250
20 - 24	----	1 / 1400
25 - 29	----	1 / 1100
30 - 31	----	1 / 900
32	----	1 / 750
33	1 / 420	1 / 625
34	1 / 325	1 / 500
35	1 / 250	1 / 350
36	1 / 200	1 / 275
37	1 / 150	1 / 225
38	1 / 120	1 / 175
39	1 / 100	1 / 140
40	1 / 75	1 / 100
41	1 / 60	1 / 85
42	1 / 45	1 / 65
43	1 / 35	1 / 50
44	1 / 30	1 / 40
45 and older	1 / 20	1 / 25

So anyway, back to the actual ultrasound. The tech was having a hard time getting baby to move into the position she wanted, so she didn't take hardly any time at the end to take good pics because she was too frustrated. 

(And although I wanted a video, and they told me on the phone they could do one, the tech told me, "Oh we will only tape once, so I'll do it now if you want, but this isn't a very long or interesting scan, you should probably wait for the 20 week one. GRRR. Okay, fine, then... figured I'd get pictures, that would suffice. *sigh*) 

Anyway, she got so frustrated with baby's uncooperativeness that she even called the doc in to re-check what she'd measured. Then, of course, the doc decides to blame it on my weight... but when I asked if a transvag would be better, she said, "no."

And then the doc says, "You need to have an u/s every 5-6 weeks from now on to measure the baby's size." Huh? WTH? Why?

"It's hard to palpate a baby on someone your size, and we need to know how big baby will be for delivery."

Oh freakin' PLEASE! I've had two home births and two midwives who could palpate my babies JUST fine, thankyouverymuch. (I didn't say that... )

I DID say, "Isn't late u/s notoriously inaccurate for judging a baby's actual size?"

"Well, something is better than nothing."

FEH!

She was also really, really, really hard to get info out of. She didn't like that I was educated about the scan, that I knew terms like "echogenic bowel" and wanted to know if baby had one. She was very avoidant, and just kept giving me the equivalent of "don't worry your pretty head about it" again and again. GRRRR.

So I'll ask for copies of the test results from the doc in two weeks, when I see him, and I'm calling around to interview home birth midwives this week.

Guess I needed a kick in the butt to motivate me! 

But here are two (albiet blurry) pictures of little Luke or Lucy:

 

 

The Rabbit Really Died!

Okay, not really... but if we were back in the day, he would have! Now I just have a little plastic stick with some chemical paper reaction to say, "We're Pregnant!" Baby number five, due April 8, 2009, planning another home birth. This one will be an Aries... THAT should be fun! We were planning another Aquarian, but the universe had other plans.

We did see an OB, had an early ultrasound. That was new - I've never had one so early. There's actually a moving-around little baby in there! It's only about the size of a kumquat, apparently, although I swear I've felt it moving already!

Here's a "picture" of our little one:

 

If you can't tell, that round thing on the right is the head - the rest, kind of curling around on the left, is the body. (Baby's looking down). If you look close, you can see little arms and legs. We actually saw them waving around at us during the ultrasound!

We told the kids - Zoe is so excited she can hardly contain herself. We let her call and tell the grandparents. Dmitri got to tell them when the baby's coming. And he made it very clear that he wants a baby brother. Zoe wants a baby sister. So someone is gonna be disappointed... :x 

We're still tossing around name variations, but we know, at least, what the baby will be called. If it's a girl: Lucy; and if it's a boy: Luke. We've got all sorts of variations and spellings, though, from Lucille, Lucia, Lucida or Lucienne for a girl to Lucas, Lucius, and Lukanos for a boy. And more...

He/she will be named after both of his/her maternal grandmothers (they were both named Lucille) and a very good friend of ours, Luke, who passed away a few years ago. As for middle names, we may just go all egotistical with Dawn and Michael, who knows? :)

NOW we just have to try and stick to our guns and NOT find out the sex beforehand. I already have grandmothers who want to buy clothes, who are clamoring to know! Eek! I don't know if I can sit in the ultrasound room, and have the tech find out, and NOT ask. At first, I really wanted it to be a surprise, but now Michael says he doesn't care if it's a surprise - he'd be fine with knowing or waiting.

Sheesh. Make my life difficult why don't ya?!