1st OB Appointment

Yesterday I got a phone call from our OB's office saying they would like to move up our appointment to today or next week (which didn't work for us as we will be in Vancouver). So we took the appointment for today. I was suspicious as to why we got bumped up; I suspected it had something to do with our NT results from last week, and it turns out I was right.

The nuchal measurement on our baby's neck was normal, but my hcg levels were higher than normal, and this put our risk of Down Syndrome to 1/149. The normal risk level for my age is somewhere around 1/1000. While the risk is definitely higher, this assessment is only a screening, and doesn't consider a lot of other factors. Really, it means we have a 99.3% chance of having a healthy, normal baby, and those are excellent odds. Because of this, and because we would never terminate for Downs, we decided not to get an amnio and will wait for further information after our 18 week ultrasound.

I won't lie; for a few hours today we were feeling a bit stressed about it. But Nate and I talked it through at length (I love my husband!), did some research, and we feel a lot better. We are not going to stress. We will love this baby no matter what, and truly believe our baby is going to be fine.

The upside to our appointment was that we finally got to meet our OB, who we already love after just the first visit. She is incredibly knowledgeable and has an amazing bedside manner. She also knows Nate's mom, who works with her in L&D at the Royal Alex. She brought out the doppler to take a listen to the heartbeat, and every time she found it, baby would squirm away before she could get an accurate reading. So, she brought in the portable u/s machine, and we got to take another look at our little one. He/she is quite the mover; I could see him/her flopping around and at one point the baby even waved! Well it looked like it waved, it was very cute. And the best part was a nice strong heartbeat of 170.

My next OB appointment is in 4 weeks on June 17; the same day as our 18 week u/s. This works out well because it's in the same building. So our appointment is at 9:05, and we will have our ultrasound at 10:45. I'm keeping my fingers crossed and praying everything will be fine, but if anyone is out there reading, please send positive thoughts our way.