Third Ultrasound

Hi All!

Well, 2 months have passed since our first posting and I'll try to make it easier for people to view the blog. Today we had an ultrasound done at higher resolution. I'm 16 weeks along and it is truly amazing how much the baby has changed since its first shrimp-like appearance. You can see hands and finger bones, its legs are crossed in one view, and there is a profile view where you can see that our baby has a nice round head (not a melon head)!

We did amniocentesis today which is a way to check on the baby's chromosomes to make sure it is ok. A very fine needle is passed through the abdomen into the amniotic sac to withdraw fluid. Cells from the baby are in that fluid and that is how they do the chromosomal analysis. Chris was sitting in the room near the perinatal specialist as he was getting ready to insert the needle and I told him, "Be careful Chris not to bump the doctor!" So he obliged me by moving FAR away to the other side of the room. We'll get the results in 2 1/2 weeks or so. A long wait! Otherwise all is well. I'm down to just one or two pants that I can wear to work so I need to start shopping for those sexy maternity clothes!

First Visit to OB

Hi All,
I decided that it is way easier to communicate through a blog. We are still keeping our exciting news under wraps for now, so please keep it to yourselves!

We just had our first visit with our OB Dr. Knight. He was recommended to us by our primary care doctor and a colleague of mine. What a great guy. Nice personality, older gentleman who said he delivers 9/10 of his patients. Though he also said he takes 12 weeks of vacation a year, so not sure how that all works out. When we had a meeting with him, it reminded me of that scene in the movie "Knocked Up" where the couple are interviewing various doctors before they pick who they want! When he told us how many of his patients he actually delivers, I thought, "He's our man".

So attached, is an image of our second ultrasound. The baby looks so much bigger though it only measure 2.12 cm which is just shy of an inch. You can see the head, arm buds and legs. You can see the placenta and even ventricles of the brain (the baby is not an airhead!). We saw the heart beat again but this time you could see the walls of the heart. And it moved too while we were looking at it!

The nice thing is that Dr. Knight told us that in seeing the heartbeat at this stage (9 weeks), he thought the chances of miscarriage are only about 3%. That really made me feel a lot better!

The other thing he told us is that whatever happens to be pooching out at my belly, is not the uterus/baby but just gas and bloating. Darn! That was a little disappointing as I was sort of feeling happy to have a little belly. Oh well. I'm sure it will come.

That's all for now. I look forward to hearing your comments.