March 17, 2014

Happy 2nd birthday, Miss A!

Two years ago today, this amazing little girl entered our lives, and our world will never be the same.

Happy birthday, Miss A!

March 16, 2014

Anatomy Scan

We had the Kiddo's anatomy scan recently. Overall, everything looked good.

There is a 4-chamber heart, 3 vessels in the cord, 2 kidneys, and the brain looked good. The only thing that was kind of unusual was the ultrasound tech couldn't get a clear picture of the stomach.

She is the opposite of an alarmist - in all of our scans with Miss A and up until this point with Kiddo, she had never given even the tiniest, slightest hint of any concern. So I started to get nervous when she kept fixating on it. But then the peri looked and felt like she saw it clearly, and while she was looking, the ultrasound tech left the room to go look at the images from our past ultrasounds. She came back and reported that she found very clear images of the stomach on a couple of recent ultrasounds, so then she was satisfied, and I breathed a little easier.

Since Miss A was born with pulmonary valve stenosis, we'll have a fetal echocardiogram to get a closer look at this Kiddo's heart in mid-April. After that, the gestational diabetes test is planned for the end of April, at 24 weeks. The peri is ordering it a little early since I had it with Miss A.

Once we have the GD results back, we'll pick a day to schedule the C-section. The peri and I have not had an in-depth conversation about this, but I did bring it up at a high level a few appointments ago.

I talked about my concern that my water breaking with Miss A was actually likely a minor placental abruption, and my concern about being at even higher risk for it this time because of that history and because of the large SCH in the first trimester. Because GD, high blood pressure (which was actually very good at the last appointment - 111/64), and advanced maternal age can also all cause the placenta to start breaking down early, she was receptive to my concerns.

She wants the GD results before we pick a date because she wants to know if that is going to be an additional risk factor, but she actually seemed open to delivering during the 37th week. She prefers her singleton patients to wait until 39 weeks, and in an ideal world, I'd be all for that. But given that Miss A came at 38w0d on her own and the risk factors that I have, 39 weeks feels a bit unlikely to both of us.

I'm all for going as far into the 37th week as possible, but I really don't want to push it beyond 38 weeks. Call it mommy instincts, call it fear, but whatever it is, there is something inside me that feels like the 37th week is the safest option, and anything beyond 38 weeks feels risky.

But at this point, even 37 weeks feels like forever away. I'm 19w1d today. How is it that I'm not even at 20 weeks yet? It feels like I should be in the third trimester by now. Not that I'm impatient or anything...