Nuchal Translucency Scan

12w5d

            Yesterday we went to our Nuchal Translucency Screening (the ultrasound to look for genetic abnormalities such as Down’s Syndrome, Trisomy 13, and Trisomy 17).  While the screen is just a predictor not an absolute, everything went really well!  They check for several things during an ultrasound (Nuchal fold, nasal bone, heartbeat rhythm, gestational size), and they also take some more blood from me to look at 2 hormone levels.  We won’t get the full results with the blood work until our next appointment, but everything from the ultrasound was great!  Baby had a Nuchal fold of 1mm (anything under 2.5mm is good), nasal bone was present, heartbeat was 160 bpm, and gestational size measured right on track (actually, one day bigger than their first projected due date, but I was charting my BBT, so I knew they had been one day off all along.)

            Now that we have all the official stuff out of the way… Baby was so cute during the ultrasound!  (For simplicity, I am going to refer to baby as a "he" today, but next time I will use "she" until we know which pronoun is correct.)  He would not cooperate with the u/s tech, so we got to watch him for a long time!  He liked to stretch and play with his hands.  In the profile shot, you can see his arms are up next to his face.  You can just barely see his other hand on the other side of his face.  He played with his foot and sucked his thumb for a while too.  So amazing to watch!!!! 

At this point, we are really close to being out of first trimester (YAHOO!!!), and my morning sickness has been calming down.  I still have difficulty swallowing pills and brushing my teeth, but not every time.   Hopefully it keeps improving!

This and That

11w4d

          Luckily my morning sickness has started to subside, sort of.. I’m still vomiting regularly, but I don’t feel sick all day anymore.  From weeks 6-10, I was pretty much nauseous throughout each day, almost everyday with vomiting intermingled.  Now, I am just sick at night.  My circadian rhythm has always been off, so it kind of makes sense that my “morning” sickness would be at night..  According to everything I’ve read, it is supposed to go away after the first trimester.  I’m telling myself I have less than a week and a half of it left! 

            Other than me feeling icky everyday- we have gotten some work done on the baby room!  Mom came over on Monday and helped me remove the 1970s wallpaper (that was under the OTHER wallpaper I had already removed!).  Underneath the second layer of wallpaper, we also had a bit of a surprise… The room was painted… PINK!  Is it a sign?? (Ben says “NO!”) We’ll find out in about 8 weeks!  Wow, typing 8 weeks gave me a bit of a jolt.  In my mind, the date we find out the gender has seemed like this super far away time that will just never really get here, but 8 weeks really isn’t that long!  Yay!

            Ben and I are still back and forth on our favorite (i.e.: tolerable to each other) boy names.  We have pretty much decided on a girl’s name (we are still determining the middle name, but we have 3 strong options).  If Ben could name our boy without my input, we would have a Santino (Sonny), Vitto, or Ceasar.. If I could name our boy without Ben’s input, we would have an Eli, Isaiah, or Everest..  There are a few names we have both agreed we could live with, but so far, nothing has really struck us both as a great male name.  We’re working on it..

Second Ultrasound!

9w2d

We went back to the doctor today.  We went over all of my many blood tests from our last visit(s).  I found out my blood type (O+).  The doctor said that when the baby is born, we will need to blood type him/her as well.  If Ben is anything other than O, the baby will have a higher chance at becoming jaundice, but the doctor didn’t seem worried about it.   As far as the rest of the blood tests, everything was good to go!

We also got to see our little one and hear the heartbeat again!! Wow, it is amazing the difference 3 weeks makes!  His/her heartbeat was 171 this time, which the doctor said was right on track for 9 weeks.  Also, baby now actually looks like a baby!  We were able to see a clear head and body and cute little arm and leg buds!  It was absolutely remarkable! 

            We get to go back in 3 more weeks to do genetic testing, which will include another ultrasound!  I think I’m getting spoiled getting to have an ultrasound each time I go in.

Almost Summer!

9 weeks tomorrow

Morning sickness is the worst!  We have 1.5 more days of school with kids (then 2 professional development days).  I can’t wait to be able to sit on my couch reading a book with morning (all-day) sickness, rather than wrangling wild seven year olds!  I love my students, but the past week has been a huge hurdle. 

Also, I am quite sure one of my brightest students has figured me out, as she over heard me telling a close teacher friend I was, “really excited but couldn’t tell anybody”.  The student came over to me and asked what my big news was.  I told her I couldn’t tell quite yet.  Her response was, “Ok, but I couldn’t help but notice, you’ve put on a little weight..”  HA!  This is not at all the type of student who would have made a weight comment if she weren’t fishing for a reaction to her question.  (And at this point, I haven’t put on enough weight to be noticeable by anyone other than Ben and I.)  When we get back to school, I think she will be the first student I tell. 

Paris and Morning (all-day) Sickness

May 23^rd -31^st

7w2d to 8w2d

            As most of our friends and family know, we had been planning a trip to Paris, France with Ben’s family for about a year now.   The dates finally arrived, and so did my morning sickness.  I think I was the most excited person in the family about going to Paris.  I have taken 4 semesters of French, and I couldn’t wait to see all of the amazing things I had read and learned about with my European Studies Minor in college.  Unfortunately, morning sickness began to set in around 6.5 weeks.  At first I was just tired all the time.  Then I started to feel nauseous most of the day.  And finally, just in time for our flight, my gag reflex went into overdrive. 

We stayed in a beautiful part of Paris, and we were walking distance to almost everything!  However, walking distance became a double-edged sword for me.  I loved how easily we could get from place to place, but that inadvertently meant walking an average of 13 miles each day while going from place to place to place (and in and around each place).  When we visited Rome, I had no trouble walking at least that much (and probably more), but with my new, lovely pregnancy symptoms, each day became a greater challenge for me to keep up.  Even so, I am still thrilled that I had the opportunity to see and do so many incredible things.  At 8.5 weeks gestation, our baby is more traveled than I was until my twenties!

Telling Our Parents

After getting the good news from our doctor yesterday, we couldn’t wait to tell our immediate families.  We decided to make a short movie trailer to share the news.  (I’ll try to attach it.)  After Ben got off work, we made a quick trip to Sevierville followed by a late night pop in to Oak Ridge.  Jack and Sue appeared to be a bit more shocked than my mom and dad, but both sets of parents seemed delighted.  I was amazed at how quickly Sue picked up on the message of the trailer!  I think it was maybe 2 seconds in when I saw it click based on her expression. 

            We told Katie and Ryan the news in their own way.  One night when we were hanging out, we told them we would bring them a drink when we ran upstairs and had planned to bring them cups we had written “Shhh… Aunt Katie” and “Shhh… Uncle Ryan” on.  But we had a last minute complication, and Katie was the only one to get her cup that night.   We used the same approach for Ryan the next day at a Mexican restaurant.   It was actually funny watching him process it because he already is an uncle, so he just thought we were calling him Uncle Ryan for the fun of it.. You can see his expression change in the pictures. 

            Now we just have to keep quiet for a few more weeks to make sure everything continues to progress.  It is going to be difficult to keep such a big secret from so many close friends and family, but I would hate to have to un-tell people if something doesn’t go as planned.  We’ll keep praying and hopefully be able to tell more people after our next appointment!

First Ultrasound!

6 weeks

This weekend we had a very scary incident, but let me give the results first: a heartbeat of 109 bpm and our first picture of little bambino.

As I’ve whined about, our first ultrasound wasn’t scheduled until May 17^th.  That changed because Saturday afternoon while shopping with Katie and Whitney (who we still haven’t told), I went to the restroom and found quite a bit of blood.  Being that I was in public and a delicate situation with my inlaws, I tried my best to not freak out, but I don’t remember much else about the day and probably didn’t do a good job of acting normal.  As soon as we met up with the men, I gave Ben a look and said it was time to go.  Luckily, he caught my drift, and we left pretty quickly.  I completely broke down in the car as I told him what was going on.  We decided to get comfort foods then pile up pillows and blankets on the couch and have a tv night in.  I also called the Emergency doctor on call for our ob group.  The first thing he said was that I was displaying signs of a miscarriage.  He said if that was happening, there was nothing we could do about it.  He offered to meet me at the ER and do an ultrasound for peace of mind, but with not being 6 weeks yet, an ultrasound may not be able to see anything either way. 

Since there was nothing we could do, we opted to wait until Monday morning (our 6 week mark) and go in first thing.  The office did a good job at fitting us in quickly.  Ben and I had prepared ourselves for the worst, but the wait (even though it wasn’t too long) was miserable. 

When we were called back, we told our doctor what had happened, so she went with us to the ultrasound room.  They got everything ready, and as soon as it was on the big screen, I could see where the baby was, but I had no idea if it looked ok.  The tech had me hold my breath for a second, and up popped a heartbeat!  The doctor looked at everything and said there was no blood in the uterus and the baby had a good heartbeat, so everything looked fine.  They don’t know why I had bleeding, but they said the baby looks fine, and seeing the heartbeat is a big hurdle to cross. 

As soon as she saw everything was fine, the ultrasound was over.  Since we had been fit it, there was no time for us to sit and marvel at what we had just seen.  The doctor and tech quickly left the room, and Ben and I just looked shocked/excited at each other.  I don’t think the awesomeness of it really had time to set in.  I would guess we didn’t see the ultrasound for more than 3-5 minutes.  Since we were at the office, they went ahead and had us visit the nurse that was going to do our appointment for Thursday, so we wouldn’t have to come back. 

Unfortunately, there was miscommunication somewhere, and I found myself with a needle in my arm and another 8 vials of blood shorter AGAIN.. When I asked if they were going to take that much blood each time, she replied that they only did it on the FIRST visit.. oops.. Oh well, it will give them two chances to catch anything off.  We won’t go back until June 6^th now, but I think we get another ultrasound then!  And, we can now tell our immediate families!!