Alien Baby

July 8th:

As I mentioned, we have a history of Downs in my family and despite the fact that my doctor wasn't concerned, he did offer us an optional testing. The test is call a nuchal translucency scan. During an ultrasound they do measurments in the baby's neck, which is then compared with my age and bloodwork to determine my risk of having a child with chromosomal disorders. Since it is practically no risk (an ultrasound and a vial of blood), we opted in.

Now I will take a minute to acknowledge there are several schools of thought on optional testing, and many doctors wouldn't even recommend it to a 26 year old. However, I am an over-planner and I tend to over-inform myself. This has definitely shown in my pregnancy. I've read a few books already, I check baby websites daily and receive several baby related emails. If I were to discover that I was giving birth to a child with any developmental challenge, I would spend the next 6 months reading everything I can on the subject. I figure I'll be too sleep deprived to read after the fact.

During the ultrasound, we made a fun discovery about our child. It's stubborn! Now if you know Jason or myself, this should be no surprise. The u/s tech needed the baby to move into a certain position to get accurate measurements. It wasn't happening. She pushed on my stomach repeatedly and the best she got was him/her putting their arms in front of their face to protect it. But no movement. Finally, she gave me some apple juice which got the little one moving, still not exactly perfect, but she was able to get the measurements.

Since we spent a good 45 minutes just moving the baby around, we didn't get many good pictures. But as you can see from the picture of the face, the baby is no longer a little gummy bear. Now I call him/her my little alien baby. But pictures weren't the reason for the ultrasound anyway and I was very happy to see the baby. (S)he was still very cute while being stubborn, yawning and moving it's arms around. Personally I just think it was trying to take a nap, and if it's like it's mommy, we don't like to be woken up!

The results: 1:3000 chance of all the chromosomal disorders they tested for. Better odds than a typical woman in my age group. So we're very happy that all is well!