The all clear

Today was my follow-up lev.el II ul.trasound. Baby was uncooperative again, and turned in the wrong direction, but the doctor was able to see enough to say that she doesn't see any reason for concern. We've effectively been given the "all clear," and to tell the truth, I hardly know what to do with myself. Of course, I'll continue to be nervous as I have been, but knowing that we don't really have anything imminent to worry about is kind of refreshing!

D and I both have a cold, which is irritating because I can't take any good medicine (I'm normally a big fan of Nyquil) and there's really nothing that you can give a 2 year old to make them feel better when they have a cold besides Motrin and Tylenol. I wish he could at least handle a Ricola or something. Poor guy has such a cough! :( The upside of him being sick is that he's much more snuggly when he's sick.

Thank you to everyone who responded to my last post. A lot of people said that my friends are probably all happy for me, and believe me, I really do know that. However, I know that there's also probably some pain there, and I don't want to be the person to cause pain. Please believe me when I tell you that I'm not resentful of those people. I really just wish things were different for them. In general, I will continue to wait for them to ask about the baby, and only then will I talk about it.

After I posted that post, I told the women in D's playgroup about the pregnancy. They were all so excited, and I did end up telling them about my losses. It was a really great feeling, and I know that the more people I'm able to tell, the less lonely I will feel.

Later this week, I have my follow-up lev.el II ultras.ound. I'm mostly nervous, but I'm also excited to see the little person again. Praying that everything is okay, and that the baby was just too small and turned in the wrong direction for them to see the "structures" they needed to see the last time. I had a little bit of a tough weekend with worrying about "doppler." It's been moving around and kicking me sometimes, which helps, but yesterday when I was listening on the doppler, the heartrate dipped while I was listening, then shot right back up, and it had me worrying about cord accidents and other fun things. I listened again this morning, and everything sounds fine. The worry just never goes away.

I've been continuing to see my new therapist every three weeks or so, and she's helping me to feel like I'm making normal choices and having normal thoughts. The irony is that we haven't really been talking that much about my pregnancy over the past couple of sessions. We've been talking about a lot of other things that go much deeper, like my relationships, especially with my mom. I've seen two other people in my life, and this woman is head and shoulders above either of them in terms of being helpful. So happy to have her.

Not enough answers

I still don't know.

Well, first the good news: my low lying placenta seems to have corrected itself, which takes one more thing off my list of "stuff to worry about."

And then the other news.

I had my level II u/s yesterday, and the baby wouldn't cooperate during the u/s. They weren't able to view all of the structures that they needed to see, so I have to go back for a follow-up at the beginning of March. The doctor said that the strucutres they could see "look fine" and the fact that they couldn't see some things "does not mean that there is a problem."

We made the decision to have the amnio because we feel that we need to know for sure, and we need to know before March. We were able to do the amnio right in the same room as the u/s. We'll have preliminary results of the amnio back in a couple of days. The thing that is freaking both of us out (and I'm kind of glad I didn't know it before I met with the genetic counselor yesterday prior to the u/s) is that the odds of this baby having Dow.n Syndr.ome are 1:95. For those of you who haven't had a DS screening, this is a HUGE number. Usually, they speak in terms of 1:10000 or 1:5000. It still means that 94 out of 95 will NOT have DS, but there's a better than 1% chance that it could.

Please, please, please... Let us be one of the 94.

Keeping a level head

Thank you, thank you, thank you to all of you wonderful ladies for the supportive comments. I, too, know three women personally who have gotten false positives on various portions of the DS screening tests. I'm trying to keep my head in the game and focus on the good results of the first two sets of tests.

I have to wait until next Tuesday for the level II u/s, and then if anything looks funky, I have the option of having the amnio that same day. It sounds like if everything looks fine on the u/s, I won't be having an amnio. I would be fine with that in some ways because of the slight risk involved, but it also would be nice to have an absolute answer. Apparently the lvl II u/s will take the place of my 18 w u/s at my doctor's office, so I'll be having that just a little earlier than anticipated. I'm still really nervous about the placenta placement, so all in all, it's going to be a nerve-wracking day.

I'm really torn about finding out the sex. We didn't with D, and that was really great. However, after everything we've gone through, I feel like we need something really fun to look forward to NOW. But... it was so much fun with D to be able to make the phone calls after he was born and say, "It's a boy!" Would it be so wrong to find out the sex and then not tell anyone...?

Not what I need right now

I just got a call from my doctor's office telling me that the second set of bloodwork (for the sequential screening) came back positive for Dow.n Syndr.ome. This does not necessarily mean that the baby has Do.wn Syn.drome, but rather that it can't be ruled out.

I guess the next step is to get a level 2 ultrasound and an amnio. My doctor got on the phone and said "Don't worry, your NT scan was fine and the first bloodwork was fine. You'll go get the screening, you'll get the amnio, and then you won't have to worry for the rest of the pregnancy."

I love my doctor, and he was very reassuring. If only it were that easy not to worry. I'm trying not to be cynical, but there's a big piece of me that's feeling like this isn't fair.