Doc appointment #3

Today was a quick checkup at Dr. Galaif's office. Heather dropped off her pee, and then we listened to the heartbeat on the doppler. This time we heard it loud and clear! They say that after 20 weeks, you can hear the heartbeat without a doppler--you can just use a standard stethoscope. I bet we'll probably end up buying one so we can hear blueberry's heartbeat at home.
We were out of the office before we knew it, sent on our way with more prenatal vitamin samples. One thing we did learn is that the doctors at this practice trade off the oncall pager weekly. If blueberry happens to come during non-business hours--which I imagine is quite likely, it is possible it could be delivered by a different doctor. Dr. Galaif said we can schedule some of our future appointments/checkins with each of the other doctors, so we can get to know all of them. I get the feeling that this is how a lot of practices do this.
I took the day off, so I dropped Heather back off at work and enjoyed the rest of the day. The next big date is the second trimester ultrasound on Sept 18th, where (hopefully) we'll find out whether its a boy or a girl!

Definitely not a Jew

Good news. Results from Perry's Canavan screening were available early and left on our answering machine today. He is not a carrier. We are both very happy. And Grandma wanted me to marry a Jew!

Ultra-Screen

Today was my first trimester Ultra-Screen. The test is a prenatal screening which gives you your risk for Down Syndrome, trisomy 18 and other chromosomal abnormalities. The findings come from combining an ultrasound measurement of the fluid accumulation behind the neck of the fetus (nuchal translucency) with blood tests and your age. First a sonographer gave me an ultrasound where she measured the baby (2.67 inches CRL- right on track), took lots of pictures (which they gave us on disc), and told me everything looked good. I noticed in the video of my last ultrasound that it looked like blueberry had no arms, so I was relieved when she easily found them. In fact, I think the baby may have been waving at us in the first picture attached. Then she took specific measurements of the back of the neck and the doctor came in to repeat the job and verify her findings. I was told to arrive with a very full bladder and since baby decided it had enough photos taken and didn't want to cooperate, the doctor had to push on my stomach quite a bit to get the baby to move to a position that made him happy. I really wanted to remain relaxed and listen to what the doctor was saying (after all, this is important stuff) but all I could really think about was how bad I had to pee. When I was finally allowed to go to the bathroom I seriously couldn't sit up straight. But boy.... I think it was the best pee ever!

The doctor told me I had great results and gave me a report which reminds me very much of the citywide test score printouts I would get in reading and math in elementary school. The results were pretty similar too. I'm in the 97.5 percentile. I was a smart kid.





After the screening we met with a genetic counselor to talk about me being a carrier of Canavan disease. Basically, if Perry is also a carrier then the baby would have a 25% chance of having the disease which could be determined by amnio. A nurse took Perry's blood (right after she took the blood of a woman who was carrying around a puke bucket and did NOT look well) and we should have results in 3 weeks or so. Hopefully, since Perry is very un-Jewish we will be ok. She also went over our family histories and made us both very late for work. We won't have results for a few weeks.

1 out of 11 is not so bad

So I got a call from one of the genetic counselors at Prenatal Associates about my jew panel blood test. Turns out I am a carrier of Canavan disease, which is a pretty scary disease. As long as Perry doesn't have it, blueberry will be fine. We are going to meet with Amy, a genetic counselor after my first trimester screening on August 6th. Nothing I can do now except wait.

Appt with Dr. Galaif and a Pleasant Surprise!

Today was a checkup for Heather with Dr. Galaif, and it was my first time meeting her. She seemed pretty nice, and I liked her. She generally seems to get good reviews on Yelp, however there is one worrisome one about failing to remove the placenta post-delivery (yes, pretty worrisome!). We're wondering if we should bring this up with her in the future to ask for her side of the story.

The checkup started off well. The doctor wanted to hear blueberry's heartbeat with a fetal doppler, but was having problems finding it. We got a little worried there, and I think the doctor could tell, so she moved us over to the other room to do a quick ultrasound to confirm everything was OK.

She found the blueberry pretty quickly, so that was a relief. It looked much more "baby-like" this time, and it was kicking around like crazy! We watched it for about 2 minutes, and in that time, it kicked 3-4 times. It looked a little bit like a bean jumping around in a mini-moonwalk.

Here's a short clip i filmed on my digicam showing a nice kick at about 20 seconds in:


Incredible!

Pin Cushon

Today I got my blood tested for my frist timester screening (coming up in about 2 weeks) and to test for genetic diseases "popular" in Eastern European Jews. They suggested I get tested for 4, but I decided I might as well go for all 11 which included:

• Cystic Fibrosis (which Dr. Lam actually tested me for and was negative)
• Tay-Sachs
• Canavan Disease
• Familial Dyautonomia
• Bloom Syndrome
• Fanoconi Anemia Group C
• Gaucher Disease
• Glycogen Storage Disease
• Maple syrup urine disease (is it wrong the mention of this makes me crave pancakes?)
• Mucolipidosis Type IV
• Niemann-Pick disease type A

The nurse was very sweet but after she took my blood, I realized she only took a small amount. I guess she didn't realize I was getting a bunch of tests, not just the 1st trimester screening ones. So she had to stick me again, this time in the other arm which didn't work out so well for her... or for me I should say. She had to call in the veteran nurse to stick me once again. Now I have bandages on both arms and I didn't even get a free juice out of it. I should have results in 2 weeks.

First look at the blueberry!

Today was our first visit with an obstetrician and we got our first ultrasound. Heather's primary doctor, Dr. Galaif, was on leave for a family emergency, so this first visit would be with a different dr at the same practice--Dr. Lam. I was a little weirded out at first because he was a guy, but he turned out to be really nice. Plus, Heathcliff Huxtable was a male obstetrician too, right? I would let Dr. Huxtable deliver my wife's baby, for sure...

When we met Dr. Lam, I was instantly reminded of the doctor in Knocked Up, but I think that is only because:

1. he is Asian
2. we had just watched it again when we were in Brooklyn

The high point of this visit, without a doubt, was seeing blueberry on the ultrasound monitor. It was basically a fuzzy blob of pixels, but it was a huge relief for us to find out that everything was proceeding just fine. We could even see the heart, which looked like a pulsing spot near the center.

We received a huge stack of booklets, pamphlets, and other materials to start reading.

Some things we learned today:

• Heather is approximately 7 weeks, 3 days along. There are lots of pregnancy websites out there that compare the size of the fetus at this stage to a blueberry--thus the name of this blog.
• The due date is Feb 15th--this means there is a chance it could be Valentine's Day, or it could fall on a Friday the 13th!
• Our little blueberry measured in at 13mm (a hair over half an inch)
• Dr. Lam said sushi is okay, as long as you stay away from the high mercury stuff

Oh, they also gave Heather 5-6 packs of various prenatal vitamins--free stuff rules!

Without further ado, our first look at the blueberry:

Our next scheduled appointment is July 30th, where I will get to meet Dr. Galaif (Heather has already met her). Our next scheduled ultrasound will be on August 6th, which will be the first trimester combined screening.