Week 12 - Oct 26 - The Start of Prenatal Screening

(Oct 28 ultrasound)

(OK, I wrote this probably at the worst time of my pregnancy so far but I'm not going to edit it, I'm sure I'll look back and find it interesting what a wreck I became!)

I'm not sure why I feel the need to defend why I want to have the prenatal birth defect screening. It seems many have very strong feelings why you shouldn't do it but for those who do, would you think I haven't thought through all the risks and concerns for the safety of the baby?! Of course, most of the defects, if found, can not be changed and there is no way we would terminate the pregnancy. But with all the fertility problems we've had, with the scares early on in the pregnancy, the ages of both Scott and I, and just for my peace of mind, I need to know and it will give me time to emotionally prepare if there was a problem.

What is really cool is that if you get the timing just right, they can do something called integrated maternal serum screening. The first time I go in, between weeks 12 and 13, they will do an ultrasound to take a measurement of a thickness of skin on the baby's neck and a round of blood tests. Then I will go back in at between weeks 15 and 16 for another round of blood tests. From that they can determine if the risks are high for spina bifida or Down's syndrome and then decide to move on to the amniocentesis if they determine a risk.

So I met with the genetic counselor first where she took down Scott and I's family histories with pregnancy. Of all the questions she asked, I was able to see that our risks are really quite low. She said she didn't see anything that would be a cause for concern, even the fact that Scott had an uncle with Down's.

Then they tried to do the ultrasound. The baby had to be either laying on its back or stomach in order for them to get the measurement correct. It seems like every ultrasound I've had so far, the baby had been laying on its side. And it was, so what do they do? They pushed and banged and jiggled my stomach for nearly 30 minutes trying to get the baby to move. The end result was me rushing to the bathroom to throw up. And I was feeling sick when I arrived! So I have to go back next week to try again.

Good news though, at the end of this week I'll be through my first trimester, the risk of miscarriage goes down and now I can spread our exciting news!

Halloween was extremely low key this year which I was really OK with. There was no way I was going to sew costumes for the family feeling as yucky as I was. Jackson had to really be convinced it was OK to wear his pirate costume from last year. There were still a lot of our friends who didn't know about the pregnancy and I wore a tacky pregnant mom shirt that said "My Baby Rocks". We got some fun reactions!