blackmoondog

For the most part, this is what I sent out to the family by email after my prenatal appointment yesterday. I wanted to archive it here as well.

Yesterday I had my 2nd midwife visit (the initial appointment was with a nurse practitioner). It was pretty uneventful though it is reassuring to hear the heartbeat each month. I'm currently at 17 weeks, 5 days and our due date is January 10, 2007.

Since my last prenatal visit, I have seen an endocrinologist who increased the dose of my thyroid medication. This has made a huge difference in my energy level. I was getting to the point where I could barely get out of bed even after a full night's sleep. She also had me start checking my blood sugar levels 4 times daily since I have a pretty high risk of gestational diabetes. So far my blood sugar looks good and the monitoring helps me see the effects of various foods. Hopefully that awareness will help me keep from getting GD.

I'm definitely starting to show now and most of my non-stretchy pants are unwearable. Thankfully, I have a lot of stretchy pants that should hold me over until I get to the point where I can start wearing some of the maternity pants that Kathy (sister-in-law) gave me. I haven't yet felt any movement (that I could recognize as such) but it is still a little early. From the sounds on the doppler that the midwife uses to hear the hearbeat, the little monkey is moving around quite a bit. Next Wednesday we have an ultrasound appointment. If the gender is readily apparent, we'll have the doctor tell otherwise we'll let it be a surprise.

The back bedroom's transformation is nearly complete! Mark installed the ceiling fan we picked up for the room, the walls are now a pale lavender and the bamboo flooring has been installed. We had a neighbor who does flooring come over to finish up the tricky bits and do the baseboards but Mark and our friend Nick did almost all of the work. All that is left now is to put another coat of paint on the baseboards and on the trim around the door, put the door back on its hinges, and start putting the furniture back in the room. The handy part about taking everything out is that we're only putting back the things that we want to keep in there. We'll be filling it up with baby stuff soon enough.

Here is a picture that totally doesn't do the room justice as the paint is a very subtle shade and the photo was taken before the baseboards were installed:

And this came in the mail today:

Why, yes, that is in fact a tie dye nursing bra.

Today we saw one of the local perinatologists (docs who specialize in high-risk pregnancies, maternal & fetal testing, and fetal therapy) for a routine ultrasound to check the baby's progress and look for signs of common birth defects (such as cleft palate, neural tube defects, and Down's Syndrome).

I filled out the usual pile of startup paperwork and we hung out in the waiting room for a while before being called back. Thankfully, there are no paper gowns involved for prenatal ultrasound at this stage -- just pulling shirts up and pants down to reveal the belly. The doc tucked a towel under the waistband of my pants and spread the jelly around (it was warmed! I was totally bracing for frosty belly!) before getting the machine going.

While I didn't recognize everything he pointed out and some of the cross sections were downright scary looking ("Am I having a T-Rex?!?!" was one of the thoughts that crossed my mind), I did recognize some of the easier parts like arms, legs, & head (the face was really difficult for me tho). Mark seemed to be keeping up better with the doctor in recognizing parts. Right off the bat the doc asked if we wanted to know the gender and since we didn't have a vehement "yes", he looked around without comment for a bit. :)

We saw the heart and all 4 chambers and the major blood vessels were present and accounted for. The spine looked like a spine. There was a gap behind the cerebellum, indicating that neural tube defects were unlikely. The folds of skin behind the neck were of normal thickness (extra indicates possible Down's Syndrome). The upper lip and jaw looked totally normal. There were 10 fingers (long ones too!!). We didn't get a good look at the toes but I'm presuming that they're all there.

The doctor had to leave for a few minutes to take a phone call during which time Mark & I discussed what we had seen thus far. He mentioned that he'd seen a cross section where the scan had moved from leg to leg across the front of the body and he didn't see any kind of bump indicating that it might be a boy. When the doctor returned, Mark asked if he'd seen any pointers on the gender and that we wanted to know and the doc promptly found and pointed out the baby's girly parts (they really looked like girly parts too, not particularly ambiguous) and told us we were having a daughter. I think at this point I grinned through the rest of the scan, despite having the paddle jammed up against my pelvis a few times while he was trying to get a better picture.

Just before we left Mark asked if the scan came up with the same due date we'd been given and the doctor said it had but then we found that he was working from the original January 5th date rather than the updated January 10th date. For January 10th the baby is apparently a tad large which kinda freaked me a bit because of my concerns about gestational diabetes. Ultimately, only time will tell, as we won't really know when the baby is ready to make her appearance until it happens. It could be January 5th. Or 10th. Or neither. Who knows. I was told that due dates are really only reliable to within a week anyway. I just really hope that she steers clear of December 25th (which is 37 weeks, 5 days and officially full-term).

Here's the picture that we received at the end (we also have a videotape of the session, which will necessitate hooking up the VCR for the first time in probably a couple of years). If you click the image to go to the larger version, you'll see the "Hi Mom & Dad" that the doctor had set up as a macro (as Mark amusedly pointed out).

It was interesting to note that this morning I looked up Chinese astrological gender prediction and the website with a calculator that actually took my Western birthday and estimated conception date said "Girl". The charts found on many websites that just show maternal age and month of conception said "Boy". The calculator did the math to determine my age on the lunar calendar, while the charts didn't really specify what system they were using. They had a 50/50 chance in either case...