Testing, testing...

The weeks keep ticking by, and the little life inside keeps growing. It's still hard to believe (you know, that I'm really pregnant and am going to have a baby). I think most mom's at this stage feel the same way, but maybe more so after infertility. It did become a little more real yesterday when we had the ultrasound for our integrated screen (more on that later). Our last ultrasound was 4 weeks ago. The little blob inside looked more alien than human back then. When our baby came up on the screen yesterday it was undoubtedly a baby. MM was so cute and excited. They had a monitor mounted on the wall so we could watch. He couldn't stay sitting by my side, he had to stand up and get a closer look. We got to see the little one squirming around, standing on his head, stretching out with his little arms behind his head (I'm using the male pronoun in the generic sense). It was lots of fun for both of us. When MM saw the printed profile shot he said, "I think he looks like me," and I think he was totally serious. I had to laugh.

The ultrasound tech said everything looked just fine. Baby measures equal with my dates and the area of nuchal translucency measured 1.2, which is good I guess. This ultrasound was part of the integrated screening test for Downs Syndrome, Trisomy 18, and neural tube defects. It's non invasive and combines the results of a first trimester ultrasound with blood tests in your first and second trimester to give a personalized risk assessment. It's not definitive, since they're not actually looking at the chromosomes, but will give us some more information. Our risk at baseline is very low just because of my age, about 1 in 850 for Downs, 1 in 3000 for Trisomy 18. We almost decided not to do it after we got all the info from the genetic counselor, but since we were already there and we knew we were going to get to see the baby, we decided to go ahead. We won't get any results until after the second trimester blood draw.

In other testing news, I passed my 3 hour glucose tolerance test! So at least for now I do not have gestational diabetes. I'll get screened again in the second trimester, so I'm trying to watch my carb intake.

I think that's the latest and greatest for now. Here are two of the best pictures from the ultrasound yesterday. The first is a full body shot. The head is on the right, the belly on the left with a little hand sticking out in the middle. The second one is a profile shot of the baby's face with a hand up by his mouth. Pretty amazing to think that this little life is actually inside me.