Drumroll please…

It’s a BOY!

How we found out:

Overall, this pregnancy has been more stressful on me than the last.  On top of that/because of that, I haven’t felt as connected to this baby has with Brody.  One night, during my exhaustion, I decided to start looking up places that do elective ultrasounds.  During my first pregnancy, I thought paying for an extra ultrasound was the dumbest thing ever.  Obviously this time around, I realized the value in doing one…

I did some research and made an appointment at the only place in our area that I could find.  They specifically do a gender determination ultrasound anytime after 16 weeks.  I scheduled ours for 16 weeks, 1 day.  I was really excited to find a way to connect with the baby, and on top of it, bring Brody with to see the baby.

We were lucky to get great pictures at the ultrasound and they were really nice and patient in getting him to the right position.  We even got several 3D pictures.  He was stubborn at first, but we got him in the right position eventually.  Originaly we were worried that we would be told the wrong gender and find out something different at the 20 week anatomy scan.  Then, we got a 3D shot of the “goods.”  There is no denying it, it’s a boy! 

Brody was very facinated at first, mostly watching what she was doing with the wand.  Kind of like, the “what are you doing to my mommy?”  Then he looked at the baby on the TV screen for a little bit while Jason pointed out his head, hands, etc.  He was mildly interested, but then had more fun running around the room.  This is exactly why we let him come to this ultrasound instead of one at the doctor’s office.  These places are set up to accomodate other children and are understanding if he wants to run around the room.  It was a great experience.

Doctor Visits

January 26th

First appointment was with a nurse to confirm pregnancy, take blood and go over any questions / give me the what to do / not to do while pregnant.

All in all pretty eventful. She confirmed that the pregnancy test was positive – but I assumed that their test was pretty consistent with the million I took at home.

February 9th

First appointment with the OB. Sadly, the OB that delivered Brody (who we loved!) died of cancer before Brody turned 1. So, this was only my second appointment with my new doctor from the same office. It was interesting to see how his views were going to be different than my last doctor.

Luckily, I got to skip some of the not-so-fun stuff, since I was just in the office last summer. He wasn’t worried about waiting until after birth to do the routine annual exam. All he did was check to make sure everything was growing on schedule

He brought a doppler in to listen to the heartbeat, but said right away, that it will be hard to hear one at 8 weeks. He said he’d probably bring me back in 2 weeks to try again to listen to it. I was instantly dissapointed. I had a bad dream this week that I miscarried the baby, and for some reason have been extrememly more paranoid with this one than with Brody.

Then…he said something like, or we could pop-in for a quick ultrasound to make sure everything is okay. Yes please!! Jason told him that I was being a worry-wart and that an ultrasound would probably make me feel a lot better, commenting that I was having bad dreams about the baby.

Once he realized that my uterus is tipped backwards (happened after Brody was born, doesn’t really affect anything), he knew that he’d never hear the heartbeat with a doppler. Obviously the baby is positioned further away, making it harder to hear anything. So he didn’t even try. He just said, let’s go see if the ultrasound is available. Yay!!

He found the baby very quickly with the wand and we instantly saw a little flicker. That was the heartbeat. He looked around for awhile, showing us the forming umbilical cord, did a 3D image of our little peanut and double checked to make sure there was only 1 in there (whew!).

Apparently I ovulated from my left ovary (I find this interesting for some reason) and there was a weird speck of something near the baby (but not on it). Doc said it was nothing to worry about, just something to note at this point and time. Said it will probably go away, but didn’t say much else about it. Luckily, we’ll be going back for another one in 4 weeks, so we’ll get to make sure everything is still on track.

Introducing, our little peanut…

20 Week Appointment

It’s a boy!!

Sept 1st we had our “big ultrasound.” This is the 20 week ultrasound that is done to measure the baby’s bones, organs and overall growth. Also, this is the best time to determine gender. Of course not all parents want to know until birth — but we did!

The ultrasound seemed to go by relatively quickly. The ultrasound tech knows what she’s looking for so she speeds through the measurements pretty fast. At one point she needed to see his spine better and pushed a little while telling him to move. He switched positions right away and she was happy he listened to her. Later the doctor came in and the tech mentioned that we had the most cooperative baby all day! That’s a 180 from our 12 week u/s experience.

Then she asked us if we wanted to know the gender, which I replied, “yes please!” She moved the ultrasound wand over and instantly I was pretty sure I knew what I was looking at. She confirmed my thoughts by telling us we were having a boy!

We’re definitely excited about having a boy. Truly we could have gone either way, but just knowing one way or another was the best part. Now I can move on to planning his nursery.

Right after the ultrasound we had our 4 week doctor appointment. The dr already came in towards the end of the u/s so he read the basic measurements. He said that everything he saw looked perfect. Our son is growing right on schedule. He also assured me that my weight and growth were also right on track. Overall this pregnancy is progressing as well as can be expected.

I only had a few questions this appointment:
#1. After week 20 I had been instructed to set up an appointment if I’m going out of town. Since we’re going camping this weekend, I wanted to make sure he had no concerns. Since we’re only 1 1/2 hours away and my cervix isn’t dialating he said we’re good to go. In about 4 weeks we’ll be traveling up to MN to visit friends, so we set up our next appointment a little early. Since we will be a little further away, he’s going to send my records along in case anything were to happen.

#2. I had heard about the gestational diabetes test but knew very little. He tells me that everyone gets this test between 24-28 weeks. Basically I will come in, drink some liquid, wait an hour and they’ll draw blood. This will then test my glucose levels to make sure I don’t need to go on a diabetic diet.

#3. I asked about the side pains I had been experiencing, which I thought were completely normal but wanted to make sure. He assured me that they were round ligament pains as the muscles are adjusting to my growing uterus. He explained that I should only be concerned if the pain centers around my stomach instead of the sides.

Then they gave me the flu-shot (regular flu not yet the H1N1). I’ve never had the flu shot before, so that was new. But it was no big deal, though my arm muscle is a little sore the next day.

Alien Baby

July 8th:

As I mentioned, we have a history of Downs in my family and despite the fact that my doctor wasn’t concerned, he did offer us an optional testing. The test is call a nuchal translucency scan. During an ultrasound they do measurments in the baby’s neck, which is then compared with my age and bloodwork to determine my risk of having a child with chromosomal disorders. Since it is practically no risk (an ultrasound and a vial of blood), we opted in.

Now I will take a minute to acknowledge there are several schools of thought on optional testing, and many doctors wouldn’t even recommend it to a 26 year old. However, I am an over-planner and I tend to over-inform myself. This has definitely shown in my pregnancy. I’ve read a few books already, I check baby websites daily and receive several baby related emails. If I were to discover that I was giving birth to a child with any developmental challenge, I would spend the next 6 months reading everything I can on the subject. I figure I’ll be too sleep deprived to read after the fact.

During the ultrasound, we made a fun discovery about our child. It’s stubborn! Now if you know Jason or myself, this should be no surprise. The u/s tech needed the baby to move into a certain position to get accurate measurements. It wasn’t happening. She pushed on my stomach repeatedly and the best she got was him/her putting their arms in front of their face to protect it. But no movement. Finally, she gave me some apple juice which got the little one moving, still not exactly perfect, but she was able to get the measurements.

Since we spent a good 45 minutes just moving the baby around, we didn’t get many good pictures. But as you can see from the picture of the face, the baby is no longer a little gummy bear. Now I call him/her my little alien baby. But pictures weren’t the reason for the ultrasound anyway and I was very happy to see the baby. (S)he was still very cute while being stubborn, yawning and moving it’s arms around. Personally I just think it was trying to take a nap, and if it’s like it’s mommy, we don’t like to be woken up!

The results: 1:3000 chance of all the chromosomal disorders they tested for. Better odds than a typical woman in my age group. So we’re very happy that all is well!

Our little gummy bear

Our first appointment with the OB was June 4th. I was just about 8 weeks along and very anxious. Though I had been feeling nauseous and very tired, I didn’t really feel pregnant. It’s hard to know that everything is going okay with the baby when you can’t feel it and you haven’t really started growing.

The first part of the appointment, the doctor allowed Jason and me to ask as many questions as we’d like. Of course I had plenty. We covered my concerns from Down’s Syndrome to boating. He assured me that based on what I told him about my family history with Downs (I have an aunt and uncle born with it) that it didn’t appear to be heriditary. This made me feel better.

Then after a physical exam (i’ll spare you the details!) he attempted to hear the heartbeat with a fetal doppler. While he said from the beginning that at 8 weeks it would be hard to hear anything, it was still nervewracking. As expected, he couldn’t hear anything. I was very dissapointed…

Then he said, well, let’s do an ultrasound to make sure everything is okay. He did the u/s himself and we quickly were able to see the baby. I think I stopped holding my breath at this point! It looked like a little gummy bear. He measured the heartbeat at a strong 169 bpm and the size of the baby was a few days further along, but right on track. It was a great experience.

As I learned quickly in my first month of being pregnant, no matter how tiny your child is, it’s natural to worry. The worrying doesn’t end with the first ultrasound either and as a future-mom, I don’t expect it to ever go away.