Baby Boom-Boom - pics and stories

I feel like I'm lagging a bit in posting about my PG happenings. I'm keeping pretty good notes in my journal but not posting a lot online. I thought it might be fun to share some of the ultrasound pictures that we've had taken - and I've had a lot. That's what happens when you've had miscarriages and are being seen my an RE and then by your own OB.

Here's our first glimpse of our miracle baby - and our first hope of a viable pregnancy. What you can't see on the picture is the glorious beginnings of a heartbeat. It was subtle but it was there. Teeny little thing! And s/he is measuring ahead by about 4 days.

Two days later, I had another ultrasound - but only because I went to the emergency room due to a high fever. Of course, the one night E has to work late, I've just put Ryan to bed and realize that I'm burning up. So like most people, I run to Dr. Google to see when I should worry. Everything I found said that in the first trimester you don't want the temp to get higher than 102...mine was 101.8 and I had no tylenol in the house. E came home and the advice nurse suggested going to the emergency room then. Since my fever was down to about 100, I opted to wait it out until the next day. I felt okay - and my fever was low (like 99 or so). Until it spiked again in the afternoon. My RE strongly encouraged me to go to the ER so I did. Everyone feared H1N1 but I tested negative. As part of the testing that they ran, my liver tests came back "elevated"...which meant I got basically a full body/organ ultrasound: kidneys, liver, gall bladder, bladder, and the baby. I didn't get any pictures of the baby but I was so relieved to know that all was good and that my fever hadn't "cooked" it.

As we held our collective breath for the next 2 weeks, we were so over-joyed to see growth as well as a real heartbeat. And with this successful ultrasound, I officially graduated from the fertility clinic...

With my "graduation", that meant I was released to my OB. Since I was NOT going back to Dr. Nelsen, I chose Dr. Riley as my new OB. The very next week, I got to meet her and she did another ultrasound. Here is the baby at 9 weeks. Everything looked great! (almost out of the first trimester and almost past the date of our last miscarriage!) We have a doppler now - so that helps with my stress/worry.

The next ultrasound was part of our NT scan. I worried a bit about the NT scan because I am so old...but really looked forward to the long ultrasound. Sadly, the pictures aren't very good but it's starting to look like a baby! This is at 13 weeks - still measuring ahead by 4 days.

At 15 weeks, I went for my 2nd trimester bloodwork. This is just a vial of blood that is supposed to give you a better idea of your statistical chances for Down's, trisomy 18, spina bifida, and one other rare genetic disorder. It takes about a week to get the results back and typically most moms-to-be will have their down's syndrome numbers go down...but in my case, the numbers went up. And they went up enough to automatically classify me as "likely".

As you can imagine, this scared the bejeezus out of us. After a tearful conversation with Dr. Riley - who said many times that she wasn't concerned - I called the high risk OB that did my NT scan. I talked to the genetic counselor there and learned what our options were. Within 2 days, we had an appointment to come in to go over the results in more detail as well as to get another ultrasound so they could 1) compare the ultrasound to the one they did 3 weeks earlier, and 2) to look for what they call "soft markers" for down's. When I made the appointment, they told me that this appointment would take the place of our 20 week anatomy scan (big u/s). And since we had already decided that we were going to take Ryan to the big u/s, I decided that I wanted to bring him with us to this appointment. I knew he'd struggle during the genetic counseling appointment but I was armed with snacks and toys...but I knew he'd be great during the ultrasound. My reasoning for bringing him: if it was bad news, I hoped that he'd be my 'strength' so that I wouldn't totally break down...and if it was good news, I wanted him there to learn the sex of the baby - that is if we were able to find out.

Sooo - to make a longer story shorter - the ultrasound showed absolutely no indicators for down's. It's not a guarantee of course but it sure was better than my statistical odds (which were better than the average for my age but still lower than the 'comfort level' of the lab and much lower than Ryan's were). They'd like me to come back for a follow up ultrasound at 30 weeks but right now we are breathing a sigh of relief.

Here's a bad picture from that ultrasound:

And the best news? It's a GIRL!

For anyone who may not know what we went through to get our miracle little girl...here's the 5 cent version:

20 months of trying....6 months of back-to-back IUIs...3 rounds of clomid (9 total)...2 broken hearts...2 blocked tubes...1 miscarriage...and the hardest decision EVER to stop trying...giving up on God....re-discovering God...lots of tears, begging, and prayers = one healthy fetus!!!! Out of FOUR pregnancies...this is the ONLY one to happen without drugs. God Bless my Miracle...please keep HER safe.