This Baby Better Like Blue!

After getting the results from our ultrasound Monday (which was absolutely perfect :)) I decided to spend the afternoon, yesterday, reconnecting with my pregnancy (i.e. sorting through a bunch of baby crap) and I realized two things:

1. My little man only wore blue for the first year of his life, and despite the fact that in my head I loathe the idea of  pink for girls, and blue for boys, I clearly didn't pass this philosophy on to my little man. All I can say is that it's a good thing we are having a boy, because if it was a girl she would have some serious gender confusion with everyone calling her a he. I hope this baby likes blue, because he's got a sea of it (or three large bins of it, to be exact) waiting for him when he finally makes his arrival. 
2. I clearly overbought newborn diapers the first time around. Yes, those 200+ diapers are leftovers from the little man. The fact that they made it though 2 moves is pretty impressive, I have to say. I'm not sure if it was because my guy was 8 1/2 lbs at birth, or if it was part of my insane fear that we would run out of anything and everything. Either way we still have WAY too many diapers in every size, which is a a good thing, because if there is one thing I remember, it's just how many diaper changes a little one needs. 

Clearly, the nesting has set in...

Next step, painting the nursery!

Hello World!

Second Opinion.

Something about our first scan just wasn't sitting right with us. After the anxiety of the last week, my husband figured it would be better if I went in and had a second scan done by someone who we know, who would really take the time to measure every inch of our baby's little body.

Guess what?

The baby is perfectly fine! I am 16 weeks and 6 days, and the baby measured between 17 weeks and 1 day, and 17 weeks in 4 days. All within an ideal range. The longest part of the little guy? His thigh bone! The same thigh bone that measured short. Go figure. Either the bone grew over the last 4 days, or it wasn't measured incorrectly the first time around (I can assure you that yesterday's was done with the most care and detail ever seen on a 17 week old in the history of ultrasounds.)

There still was a little "something" with the heart, but not to the extent we saw last time, which can absolutely happen as these things usually correct themselves. This isn't even a blip on my radar at this point.

Do you all hear that? That's the sound of my exhale being heard around the world. I feel so blessed that our little guy is going to start out his life without an array of health concerns, and if we didn't feel like we were lucky enough before, we sure know we are now.

Relief....(almost.)

My new favorite word: Normal. 

Yes, we finally heard late last night from my doctor and the FISH results came back normal. No Down's, no trisomy 13, 18, no spina bifida. Nothing. This was a HUGE relief and to be honest I am only having time to process it now. I got the call a few minutes before pickup at the LM's school, and after an excruciating 10 minutes on hold we got the great news (while I was locked in the director's office with the little man banging on the door.) She said the results are clear, and even though we have to wait for the final amnio results, we can cross these concerns off our list.

But (why is there always a but?)

When we went in for the amnio they did a fetal survey. Usually this is done after 18 weeks, but since we were there they took all of Gray's measurements. At the time we were told the legs measured average. Now it turns out that one (I believe) femur is measuring short. They also saw a VSD, which is a tiny hole in the heart, and is pretty common. Usually, it closes up in it's own, or surgery is needed to close it, but it is in no way a major concern. What is a concern is that they found both of these. What it means is one of three possibilities:

1. The test was done too early or there was error on the technicians part. By 18 weeks the femur could be just fine. 
2. They are two totally and separate issues, and the heart could close and the leg is something that we will have to wait and see on, or 
3. It is indicative of a bigger problem. These are, surprisingly, signs for Down's Syndrome (which makes me even more confident in the choice to get the amnio) but could also be a sign of something else unknown that no testing will uncover until birth. 

We are obviously hoping for 1, or 2, but we will also be meeting with a Geneticist to see what else we could be looking at. This whole thing has been such a roller coaster, but the bottom line is yesterday we received amazing news.

A lot of you are curious about what we were planning to do if the test came back positive. We got this question from our friends and family as well, and the fact is that I really tried not to think about that at all this week. Making that decision would have been the most difficult of my life, and I figured that there was no need to decide anything until we had all the answers, which is why we opted for the amnio. Before we had children my husband and I always had said that we would likely not have the baby, but of course after all we had been through with the infertility, feeling the baby, knowing the sex, having had a child, etc.. makes things feel much different than when you are talking about some theoretical situation. Since Friday we haven't really discussed what we would plan on doing, but rather focused all of our energy on the LM and wishing with all of our might that everything would turn out okay.

Which it pretty much has.

I appreciate all of your calls, emails, comments, and well wishes. I completely understand the questioning of what our decision would be (after all I share almost everything else here) and I'm so unbelievably happy that we don't have to make that decision. I especially want to thank those of you who have been through something similar, who emailed me their stories, and offered you hand while navigating through this. Hearing from you made me feel like I was not alone, and I promise to respond to you all soon. I cannot thank you enough for your kindness, and it just solidifies for me why I share my life on this blog, because so many of you are willing to open up and show the true kindness of strangers.

This has been the longest week ever, and hopefully soon we will have answers as to what else could be going on. I am going in for another sneak peek today, in hopes that the measurements were off, but I plan on spending the weekend reconnecting with my boys, the ones in utero and out.

It really does feel like the weight of the world has been lifted. Here I thought waiting on the bar results would  have be the longest wait of my life....

Waiting... Waiting... Waiting.

Is it wrong that I want to stalk my test results?

I tracked down the lab, found out per their website that the FISH test only take 24-48 hours once the specimen is received. It was picked up Tuesday at 10 and the lab is an a hour away. Assuming there were other pickups then I'm guessing it got to the lab by 4pm. unless the snowstorm of the last TWO days kept the technicians at home, then it has to be back later today.

Right?

Yeah, I think I need to read a book or something.

Whoever said that patience is a virtue, clearly spent their life medicated... or drunk.

Anytime now PLEASE!

*UPDATED* I finally broke down and called my OB at 10:57. Results are still in "process." She isn't sure if the snow will delay the results. As if I needed another reason to hate the snow.

Ugh.

Quick Update.

Hi Everyone!

Thank you again for all of your well wishes! Right now baby and I are doing fine. I had the amnio this morning, and it definitely wasn't as bad as I anticipated it would be. Our doctor literally wrote the book on this procedure, so I am feeling pretty confident that we shouldn't have any unexpected complications from the test (fingers crossed.) We had a full fetal survey don, along with the amnio, and got (hopefully) some good news. The baby (which is DEFINITELY a boy) has all of it's body parts, the legs measure normal (shorter can be a sign for down's), the neck was small and not filled with fluid (another sure sign), and most importantly we saw a pretty prominent nasal bone (the majority of children with down's syndrome are missing this feature.) Seeing this, and our super active baby, went miles to put my mind at ease.

Yesterday, we met with my OB and got some clarification as to what triggered their concern and the increased risk factor. I guess during the first trimester our nucleal fold measured 2.8. 3.0 is the cutoff for "normal" so the fact that I was on the high side of normal is the main concern. Also, when my blood work came back my HCG was 2.6 and ideally it should be 2.0. Everything else was totally normal including the AFP. These two things, combined, are what put us in the 1:30 category.

The good news is that our doctor ordered a FISH, along with the amnio, and if all goes as planned we should have our preliminary results by Friday, confirmation in 10 days. It's going to be a long three days, but seeing that big nose definitely allows me a lot more peace of mind.

Thank you again for your prayers and thoughts, I'll let you all know the outcome as soon as I hear.