It's Been Forever!!!

Wow, we had a BUSY summer! But.... our biggest news, that pretty much everyone already knows is.... Sofia is going to be a big sister in March! This pregnancy has been very eventful! I have been really sick, I spent an afternoon in the ER for dehydration, I've had elevated thyroid levels and now we have another development in the baby drama saga! I went in on Wednesday this week to do my Quad-Screen blood test to screen for various different defects that can be fatal for the baby. They said it should take about 2 weeks to get my results back and that I'd hear as soon as they did. Thursday afternoon, I got a call from my doctor's nurse saying that they had gotten the results back, and they were not good. She told me to come in on Friday (today) at 2:30 to meet with the doctor and she would give us more information. I immediately started panicking and sobbing thinking the worst possible scenarios through in my mind. I didn't sleep well last night and my eyes have been really puffy all day long. So...today we went in, Stephen and I, and were told that our baby has a 1 in 22 chance of having Down Syndrome. This is very elevated from the 1 in 270 chance according to my age without elevated levels. Not really what you want to hear about your baby who is 17 weeks along. So we discussed our options and decided to do an ultra-sound to determine if my due date is accurate. With the Quad-Screen test, if my calculated due date is off by even a week, the numbers can be skewed, therefore causing a false-positive. So she wrote up an order for an ultra-sound that we were told we'd probably have this next week and then we'd go from there. The next step would then be, if we decided to have an amnio to determine if the baby really did have Downs. The amnio is 99% accurate but completely optional. It would basically be for our own knowledge and preparation of the birth of the baby. My prenatal care and delivery would be treated the same.

Soooo... off we went to schedule the ultra-sound and the nurse just so happened to walk us out to see if there was any chance of getting us in. To our surprise, they had just had a cancellation and we were able to get in this afternoon! What a blessing from God!! We went in and watched our baby wiggle around for an hour on the screen. There are usually 5-6 things that they look for in a Downs baby on ultra-sound. They aren't a definitive answer to whether or not the baby has Downs, but they can show up if there is Downs present. Praise the Lord, none of those things showed up! The baby has 5 fully developed fingers on every finger. There is a nasal bone present. The thickness of the neck looked great. The heart looked great. The kidneys were not enlarged. The only thing that she showed some concern over was that the bowels were a bit brighter than usual. However, she said that this could be caused by me being tiny and the contrast being brighter because I am tiny. The technician did not say that the baby does not have Downs, but she said that she thought things looked good. We did not find out what we're having. Sooo from there...the doctor will look at the ultra-sound on Monday and we'll go from there.

I'm still up in the air about whether or not I'm going to have an amnio. Part of me really would just like to know for sure if the baby does have Downs or not. But... part of me is not looking forward to having a needle stuck in my belly!

Sooo... we've completely placed our little baby in God's hands for he or she is His child and not ours. We know that HE has a plan for this baby and that we will love him/her no matter what. We are just so excited that everything looked good on the ultra-sound.