It's a BOY!!!!!!!

Here are the pictures. The top pic is measurements of the baby. I'm not sure what all of them mean. I will have to figure it out or call the doc's office back. You *know* I have to know EVERY detail. :-D

The second pic is a profile of the little guy, looking up. The third pic is a gender shot. You can see both femurs coming up, and if you look down where they meet, you will see his boy parts. The bottom shot is his little footprint. I love little feet!

So it is another boy. How FUN! He will be able to run around and swim and play with his big brothers. He will be 3 years apart from his next older bro, and that is a lovely spacing. I am so happy.

The paper says I need to wait 10 days to hear the amnio results. It should be good news. There were NO markers for anything. Nothing was wrong with the baby on the ultrasound. They kept remarking how well developed he was based on his age. His heart was amazing. They showed all 4 chambers beating away. So beautiful.

Frozen

I am petrified. I have even lost a lot of my appetite. My amnio is at 1pm today. The amniotic puncture scares me. I don't want to leak and lose a healthy baby. The other thing that worries me is stopping the Lovenox. I know it is necessary in order to have the amnio, but the last time I stopped Lovenox, the baby died. Granted, I was 5 weeks along. But my doctor talked me into stopping my meds and the first 2 nights I stopped Lovenox I got horrible night sweats, like my body was attacking the baby. After that, the sac continued to grow, but no baby. It was officially called a blighted ovum. And, of course, no doctor is going to accept the blame for that. It must have been a bad egg, right? The good news is that I did not sweat last night. I even slept. I woke up in the middle of the night as is my habit, but I got back to sleep after that too. DH and I are fighting. I think it's stress. I can't wait until this is over and things can get back to normal.

two more injections until amnio day

I'm trying really hard to remember to stop my Lovenox (blood thinner) injections on time for the amnio. It's really coming up fast now. I only have 2 more injections, Sunday and Monday morning. I skip Tuesday, and Wednesday is the amnio. I resume injections Thursday morning. I doubt I will be online Wednesday afternoon, more likely Thursday afternoon. The test is at 1pm PDT. I plan on going straight to bed/couch and staying horizontal for the afternoon of Wednesday. I will see Thursday morning how I feel. I remember at my last amnio, I felt a sharp abdominal pain if I got up to do anything on the afternoon of the test, but that feeling went away after a good night's sleep.

It will be fun to find out the gender, hopefully, at the ultrasound. I can't wait to see if the snowy white baby blanket I'm crocheting will have a pink or a blue border.

If they can't see the gender then I will know for sure by the time the amnio results are due, 2 weeks after the test, on July 4th.

blood testing results back

The first trimester screening blood results are back. The likelihood of Downs Syndrome purely based on my age would be 1 in 24. The likelihood based only on the blood test are 1 in 110. While anything over 1 in 220 is a "positive" result, it is actually a good result for my age, and there are a lot of false positives for ladies over 40. The likelihood of trisomy 18 based on age alone is 1 in 87. Based on the blood test, the risk is 1 in 5400. I asked if these numbers take into account my great nuchal measurement of 1.4mm. They do not. She still does not have the doctor's report in my file about that. And then she asked me how far along I am and I'm 13w4d, so she said it's now too late for a CVS. {big eyeroll} I TOLD them if they waited until I was 12+ weeks to do the first tri screen there would not be time to do the CVS. They ASSURED me there would be time. Only nobody bothered to call me from either my OB's office or the fetal testing office regarding my bloodwork results when they came in. Not that it really matters. I'm not going to change my mind about choosing the amnio over the CVS based on these blood results. But it would have been nice to have the option.

13 week belly pic

Here is the most recent picture. I should start growing rapidly now. The second trimester is when I grow the fastest. In the third tri, I'm huge from start to finish.

I stopped pio shots beginning Sunday morning. Meaning I skipped Sunday's shot. No big headache, which is a relief. I had a bad progesterone drop headache last week when I dropped the dose by another half, down to a quarter dose. Baby is still kicking away, so that is reassuring. I didn't feel any kicks all morning and I started to get panicky, but this afternoon the little one is tap-dancing away.

My morning ickies have gone away, too. I think maybe the progesterone supplementation makes that a little worse. I usually don't get much of that at all, and it was a little stronger with this pregnancy. This is the first time I used progesterone throught the first trimester. Now I'm only taking Lovenox and vitamins. Yay! Counting down to the amnio day, which is 29 days from today on June 20th. I'm nervous about that. About the risk to the baby from the procedure. I will feel SO much better with that behind me.

I scheduled the amnio

The amnio is scheduled for June 20th. That is good. Baby should be plenty big, and the procedure should have a very low risk. This is my 3rd amnio with the same doctor. The technique has always been good there, and I am a little worried, but not too worried.

At the genetic counseling appt yesterday, I paid special attention to the age-related risk ratios that were of interest to me. It turns out that the risk of genetic problems at my age is exactly 1:18, or 5.56%. And I glanced ahead to the 45-y-o risk ratio. The incidence of genetic problems for a 45-y-o is 1:11, or 9%. That is the risk in pregnancies that make it as far as 16 weeks. Wow. I think the risk for 49-y-o pregnancies, not that there are too many of those got close to 1:3 or 1:2, I can't remember which. Eeeek!

We also will probably find out the gender at the ultrasound that is performed at the amnio. That should make it interesting.

Holding my breath

I feel that I have been patient. Waiting for the days to tick by. Waiting for the genetic testing. I'm starting to get nervous about it. DH and I went through the genetic counseling before our last amnio, and I remember flipping the pages to look at the statistics for 43-year-olds, anticipating that we would try for another child. The statistics were 5% genetic problems. That means 5% of the 43-y-o pregnancies who made it as far as 16 weeks had diagnosable genetic problems, such as trisomy 21 or 18. Now that may seem a small percentage at first glance, but when it is a matter of life or death, 5% is huge. For example, if you were to be undergoing an elective surgery and they told you there was something wrong with your heart and you had a 5% chance of not waking up from the anesthesia, would you go ahead with it? I think not. So here I sit, nervously biding my time. Hoping that the nuchal test this Wednesday comes out good, and that I can hold off for the amnio in June. If things are bad, I will rush in for an immediate CVS test. As I sit here typing, my little baby is tapping away at my insides. And my heart is heavy with worry.

First OB appt today

I ran out of the house super early this morning for my first appointment with the obstetrician. It was exciting. The baby's heartbeat on the doppler was 166. Halfway between boy and girl heartrates, lol, so no information there. The doctor said that I could reduce the progesterone in oil dose back down to a half-cc since my progesterone draw last friday was 60. He says that the placenta is now making progesterone, so even at half the dose it will be above 20. He gave me a lab slip for 2 weeks to get a progesterone check to see that the level doesn't drop too much. He says that 13 weeks is when he has ladies stop the shots altogether. I look forward to that. My buns are quite ouchy! He also did the standard pap smear and ran the normal prenatal panel of bloodwork. I'm not sure exactly what that entails, but I will get copies of my results faxed to me next week. I think there is a beta hcg in there somewhere, so it will be fun to see what that number is now. He is on board with the plan of getting the nuchal and first tri test, then deciding on CVS versus amnio. I hope I get to do the amnio, and that the nuchal is good. That way I don't have to take my Lovenox break until later. Blood pressure was 112 over 75. Urine had no protein or sugar. He supported me on the meds I am taking and agreed that it is best to be cautious about this pregnancy. There is no room for error here. This is probably my last shot at it.

Coming full circle

The hilarious part is the punchline. My new appointment is already in my cell phone calendar. It was the first appointment set up by my OB doctor. Let me explain. I called the OB a week ago saying I wanted to set up a CVS appointment and that I would be released by the RE soon. So they said that the OB usually schedules ladies for a first tri screen (nuchal u/s and blood work) before deciding on any CVS or other testing. My RE told me that he would continue to follow me for a few more weeks, and that he was referring me to another doctor, Dr. Porto at UC Irvine. So I called up and canceled the other appt. I reached Dr. Porto yesterday and he is out of my insurance network. So DH and I decided to go ahead and go with the original people and do the first tri screen and bloodwork. I called today to get an appt, and they gave me my old appt back. 9:30 on May 16th. I'll be 12 weeks, and there will be time to get a CVS test is my first tri screening results are bad. If the screening results are good, then we will feel comfortable enough holding off to do the amnio, which has a lower risk overall than the CVS, and I will be able to continue Lovenox for another month longer before having to take a couple of days off for the procedure. And another funny thing. It turns out that if I need CVS through the original doctor, they will send me to Dr. Porto anyway. Ha! Whew! My head is spinning with all this.

More stress and confusion

Here's what I found out today. My RE wanted me to get the CVS, so I called his guy, Dr. Porto in Orange. He apparently does a lot of CVS tests, and even did the wife of my obstetrician. I wonder why my OB sent me to someone else, when Dr. Porto was good enough for his wife? So my big question when Dr. Porto called me this afternoon was will the Lovenox and baby aspirin cause a problem with the CVS procedure. He says that the Lovenox is a problem, and I would need to stop it 36 hours before the procedure, and not restart it until 24 hours after. The baby aspirin is not a problem. I discussed with him the fact that I have positive tests for IgM antibodies. He told me that maybe it would be best if we did a full consultation, so that he could look over all of my labwork and decide if it is OK to stop Lovenox at 11 weeks or if it would be better to go with a nuchal test and bloodwork, then decide if it might be better to wait for an amnio. The amnio is done later, so I could go longer on the Lovenox without stopping. Sigh. Then the lady in his office calls me back and says we are out of network, and the consult would cost $1100 cash (out of network deductible) and the procedures would be covered at 50%, such as the $1600 CVS would cost me $800 cash. I wonder what DH will say. Sigh.