The Many Faces of Maybe Baby

We arose early to get to the Perinatal Specialist's office by 7:30 am.  With the many doctor appointments that our GC has had lately an early appointment meant less of an issue with work.  Normally I would push for a little later appointment (I am not a morning person, at all) but we have also had a few appointments ourselves.  I have not yet announced at work and am running out of plausible reasons to have so many doctor appointments, so one early enough that I didn't even have to miss work was actually a blessing.

As a mentioned in an earlier post, I have agreed to postpone, and possibly even forego, invasive prenatal tests if our noninvasive prenatal screening does not indicate any potential issues.  Today's noninvasive prenatal screening was the nuchal translucency scan which is a detailed ultrasound that measures the nuchal fold thickness.  Increased thickness measurements are also associated with Downs Syndrome and some other chromosomal birth defects and also congenital heart defects.

The procedure for the NT scan is pretty much the same as for any other pregnancy ultrasound.  Our GC needed to have a fairly full bladder, have some cold goo rubbed on her belly, and endure some pressing on her fairly full bladder - not too bad.  The technician moved the screen so that we could all see and went to work.

Maybe Baby is a pretty active baby.  MB kept moving around making it a little hard for the technician to get the measurements and pictures that she wanted.  Our GC cannot yet feel MB's movements but is dreading the later stages of pregnancy if MB is going to be as active as we think MB may be....

Despite MBs in utero acrobatics, the technician was able to take a number of cross-sectional views and pictures.  She seemed very thorough.  She showed us that the top of MBs head and that you can see both halves of the brain developing.  She pointed out MBs heart and stomach.  She said that the placenta was at the top of the uterus (our GC thought to ask about that - good call).  We got to see MB moving both arms and both legs.  Right now MB measures 2 inches from top of  head to rump and has a heartrate of 167 bpm.  The technician can't give us the official OK, but so far things seem to look good.

We also got to take home a cute view of what look to be a nice long pair of legs.....