12w1d: Nuchal Translucency Screen

I feel bad for not posting more often, but I've been pretty busy lately with the new job. I hope that I still have some readers out there!

The good news is that I was able to move Blueberry's nuchal translucency screen from next week to today. The wonderful news is that everything looks great!

The baby was measuring on-target at 54.5 mm CRL, corresponding to 12w0d; that is just one day off... great! The heart rate was either 151 or 161 (too hard for me to see clearly). The nuchal translucency itself was 1.4 mm. Before screening, my age-related risk of Down Syndrome was 1 in 301, and this decreased to 1 in 1359 with the NT and bloodwork results. Before screening, my age-related risk of Trisomy 13/18 was 1 in 645, and this decreased to 1 in 5858 with the NT and bloodwork results. Needless to say, we are thrilled.

S was able to rush over from his work for the second half of the ultrasound, and it was fun to see the baby again with him. I got to see a few kicks and waves before S arrived, but the baby seemed to quiet down a bit after he got there. (Sleeping, maybe?)

And now for some pictures:

The first one shows the baby in profile, head on the right side.

The next one is a more magnified view of the head and neck, with the top of the head on the left side. This is the view from which they measured the nuchal translucency.

This one is my favorite and shows a tiny bent leg and foot. I wonder if the bright white areas in the spine, femur, shin, and foot are the beginning of ossification of the bones?

In other news, the cervix looks nice and long (over 5 cm), and the placenta is in an anterior location, which means that I may not feel kicks and other movement quite as early as some people. Oh well, at least I'll have a reason not to worry if that happens.

I started feeling a bit pudgy through the waist area over the weekend. I have gained somewhere between 0.6 and 1.8 lbs (my digital scale fluctuates from day to day). I don't think that anyone else can see a major change, but I can notice a difference. It's not a baby bump, yet, though. My guess is that the uterus is probably starting to fill the pelvis, pushing my intestines, etc upward, maybe?

Oh! This Monday I had lunch with a colleague of mine. She is a year ahead of me in terms of training, but is actually 40 years old. She got married about 2 months after me (12/06). Well, I had heard last week that she is pregnant, and I congratulated her. Eventually the conversation got around to the fact that I am pregnant, too, and that both of us did IVF! One really stressful thing about her experience is that her original IVF cycle was cancelled... due to egg retrieval being scheduled at the same time as last fall's massive San Diego wildfires!! OMG, I cannot imagine being all the way stimmed and then having to completely cancel the cycle due to a natural distaster like that. I bet it was a staffing issue at the RE's office (and this RE's office was actually in an area near the evacuation zone), but she was told that "they had poor results during previous San Diego wildfires" (2003). Yikes! I forgot to ask her whether she was able to get any reimbursement for the cost of all those wasted meds. Anyway, she cycled again in February and is currently at 20 weeks with a little girl! Congrats to her!

S's birthday is tomorrow. I hope he likes his present! I think I still need to get something else, too. I always feel bad because I have a hard time choosing gifts, but in the end it usually turns out OK.