Perinatal Assoc visit #3

Today was our third visit to SF Perinatal Associates, where we get our high-def ultrasounds. Whereas the first two visits were our ultrascreen (at 13 wks) and second trimester screen (at 18 wks), this was a followup because the doctor saw a slight dilation of the umbilical veil at the 18 wks ultrasound. We got the same ultrasound technician as our first visit--I think her name was Sarah. She was really nice and took the time to point out the various parts she was taking measurements of. The baby was in a breech position--his butt was pointed downwards, and he had his legs and feet up in front of his face. I guess this is a dangerous position to deliver the baby in, but its perfectly fine for now--the technician said the baby will do plenty more moving around in the next 3 months.

On to the important item: the umbilical vein measurement, which was .77 cm, last time it measured approximately .6cm. Dr. Musci said that it is still not quite large enough to be classified as varicose or varyx. So, for now, this is all good news. He does want to keep an eye on it, so we have scheduled another ultrasound in a little over 3 weeks from now.

The plus side of having to come in for another ultrasound is that we got to see a lot more of boyberry. The movie Heather posted earlier is a neat 4D clip where you can see him with one of his feet up in front of his face.

Here's some of the boyberry's stats:

• his heart rate was 153 bpm
• 1 lb 3 oz
• growth is 44th percentile

Finally, here is the week 22 picture:

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.

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!

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.