the post-ultrasound honeymoon

Every time I have an ultrasound and am reassured that baby is fine, growing perfectly and not missing any limbs, I have a sort of honeymoon period of utter relaxation and confidence which lasts about 5 or 6 days before I start worrying again. I spill the beans to a few more people, only to regret it when the honeymoon is over and wish that I hadn't told anyone, because what if everything goes wrong?

Anyway I am now in that happy honeymoon place, as I had an OB appointment and u/s yesterday (15 weeks), and yes, everything is looking great. Ok, the placenta is still too close to the cervix, but doc said it's minor and I really shouldn't worry about it. It's not worse than before, so I'll take it. I can't even describe what it does for my peace of mind when I see the little mite stretching, waving and practice chewing, and it makes me so grateful to be living in this century with all its technological possibilities.

The other thing I haven't written about yet is our NT scan and bloods. The NT ultrasound looked perfect, measurements showed very low risk and the nasal bone was seen, etc. But when I got my blood results back they combined to give me a 1:60 risk of Downs syndrome, which is considered high risk. At my age it should be around 1:230. So the question is, what to do now? This is a very tricky one, and I know a lot of people have strong positions on this, but here goes. We haven't made any absolute decision, but I think that if we had a definite diagnosis of Downs, we would probably terminate. I'm not even going to get into the whole discussion of why or why not here, and I hope people will not ask me to. But basically, we have had two completely opposite pieces of advice from our health care professionals about what we should do.  Our RE, who ordered the tests in the first place, advises us to go ahead and have an amniocentesis. Our OB, on the other hand, does not trust the blood test results, says they give a lot of false positives, and says if you compare the supposed risk of Downs (1:60) to the risk of losing the baby in the amnio (1:50 or 2 %), the risk of losing the baby is greater, so he would not recommend the amnio. It's a good point. So, do we risk having a baby with Downs that we would otherwise have terminated, or do we risk losing a potentially perfectly healthy baby in the amnio? I think what we have decided to do is to do the triple test, which should give us a slightly more accurate measure of the probability, and based on that decide whether to do the amnio or not. So the triple test will be in a week, and my present honeymoon period will surely be well and truly over by then.

As for the gender of the baby, the OB gave us a 99% prediction yesterday. But I'm going to make you wait until I know for sure!

Scaring mama....part 2

So, since the scary bleeding from week 5 - week 6, my pregnancy has been completely unremarkable and sweetly uneventful. I have been lucky to have plenty of scans, including one at 11 weeks and my NT scan at 12 weeks. So far I don't think I have gone more than 2 weeks without a scan, which has been very reassuring. I have had lots of great nausea and my belly even seems to be growing already, although whether that's true baby bump or pregnancy bloating is hard to tell.

So I was quite unprepared for waking up this morning (12w6d) with stabbing pains in my abdomen, and then, lo and behold, blood. I was actually quite calm in the circumstance, but Mic was literally going round in circles with panic. He called my OB (yes! I have one of those now!) who said to come in for an emergency ultrasound a couple of hours later. By the time I got there the bleeding had lightened to spotting and the pain had subsided quite a lot, so I was quite hopeful, but still super nervous.

Anyway, all is well with the baby, nothing wrong there. My placenta is in slightly the wrong position and has a small tear in it, hence the bleeding. And, as usual, there's absolutely nothing I can do to make it better. Rest won't help, the same thing might well happen again, and it's not dangerous. That's what I've been told, so I'm going to choose to believe it!

The only thing I can do is stay on those pesky progesterone suppositories, and if the bleeding happens again and is prolonged, he'll put me back on PIO. And - the silver lining - my next appointment is in 2 weeks, so once again, the agonizing wait between ultrasounds has been blessedly cut short.

Hopefully the next time I post an update it will be completely absent of any drama and maybe, just maybe, I'll be able to tell you if the little troublemaker in there is male or female!