John took a half day and brought me Erbert and Gerberts for lunch. I'd never had it before, but it was tasty! Sometimes food brings such joy to my life. It's the simple things I guess. We ate lunch together while watching Hawaii Life, a new show on HGTV where people are buying properties in Hawaii. With the nasty weather we've been having we had to escape somehow.
First we had our appointment with the midwife. We were scheduled with Aszani this time. I really like her, so I always like going in to see her. We had to wait for a little while in the waiting room, so we were playing games on our phones and I was singing quietly along with the waiting room tunes. John was laughing at me because I didn't know most of the words to the song that was playing. We got called back and the nurse took my blood pressure and asked all the questions she usually does and gave me my 24 week packet with lots of info in it. After she was finished we met with Aszani and heard the heartbeat. She had a hard time finding it because the babe was so active. She finally found it and said that it was around 140 bpm. (Another sign it would be a boy.) We finished by making our next appointments at reception and went over to the ultrasound building. I had to walk slowly and probably had a bit of a waddle because I had to drink so much darn water and not pee before the ultrasound.
We got there twenty minutes early and actually sat in the waiting room thinking we might just find out if the babe was a boy or girl because we just couldn't wait until the next day. Thankfully our ultrasound technician came out early, so we didn't have anymore time to think about it. She asked us right away if we wanted to know the gender and we explained our plan to do a gender reveal cake. She said that was very popular and we got started right away. Looking at our baby on the screen gave me chills and I know I was a little teary because he (we waited until Saturday) looked so perfect. His heart was beating so strong. The baby wouldn't move around much while she was trying to get all the photos she needed. She said he was nestled comfortably right between my pelvic bones. It was so fun to look over at John just gazing at the screen. He's already such a proud daddy. He's going to be so wonderful for our little one. The tech told us to look away a few times so she could try to figure out the sex. At the end she came back with a white envelope that said "Gender :)" on it. John said he talked to the tech while I was out of the room and she said that everything looked great and that the baby was right on track. I have a phone app called My Chart and she said all the ultrasound results would be posted there, but probably not until the end of the next week. She said he looked great so we had no worries!
We had a lazy time getting back home. We went to Half Price Books and I found another Magic School Bus book. I hope the baby likes them as much as I did as a kid. After that we went to a cheese shop and got some great cheddars. Target was our last stop to get cake supplies. We picked up everything we thought Melissa might need to make our gender reveal cake. We went home to pick up a pan and headed over to Mel's house to drop off the supplies. We got Sawatdee for supper, one of our favorites. I was giddy all night waiting to find out and so excited for the next day I woke up at 6am. We had to try and relax until Melissa was ready for us to pick up the cake. We finally went over there around 2pm and I had to hold it all the way home (about 1 hour and 15 minutes!) John and I got to spend time relaxing with our families and then had pizza. Finally it was time for the cake! (Click here for a full post about finding out!) Baby Hammar is a boy and we are pumped :)
Fast forward a few days, to the Wednesday after. My phone had died while I was at yoga and I hadn't plugged it in. I made lunch and finally thought about charging it. I turned it on and it had a message from a number I didn't recognize. It was our midwife Aszani calling from her cell phone wanting to talk to me about the ultrasound results. She said it was nothing to be alarmed about, but that we needed to talk. I thought I should be in panic mode at this point, but I was oddly calm. It was a weird calm though, stuck between feeling like I should panic and feeling emotionally shut down. He's ours regardless of any "issues" he's facing. I called her back and she told me about the presence of Bilateral Choroid Plexus Cysts in both hemispheres of his brain. They are a very, very soft marker for Trisomy 18. Note that there are NO other signs and everything else on the ultrasound looked fabulous. I hate feeling on the spot and this was one of those times. I didn't know what to say/ask and Aszani kept trying to reassure me that everything was most likely fine and that they just recommend doing a Level 2 ultrasound as a follow-up. I got off the phone and called John.
We didn't want a Level 2 ultrasound at all, didn't even want another Level 1. We wanted this pregnancy to be minimally invasive and we didn't want to take more precautions than necessary. We wanted the baby to grow strong and healthy without lots of interventions. I called Aszani back to ask if the Level 2 ultrasound would change the care the baby and I received. She said no. We could do a follow up Level 1 later on in the pregnancy to see if the cysts are still there, but even so it wouldn't change what they do for us. It's important to say that in our research these cysts go away 99% of the time, some people live with them for their whole lives, some OBs aren't even telling pregnant mommas about them because it causes stress and worry for no reason. I definitely worried for a few days about it, but have decided that worrying about it won't help our little guy. He'll arrive cysts or no cysts and we'll will love him no matter what. We plan to tell our midwives that we would prefer not to even do the follow-up Level 1 ultrasound if that is an option for us. If it wouldn't change the care we'll get it makes no sense to put the baby through another one. We'll just be praying this guy is as healthy as he can be.
Sorry this post got so lengthy. I wanted it for my own record and maybe it will possibly help another new momma not to worry about this. I'm sorry if it offended anyone as well that we don't want to do follow-up work. We're making the decisions we feel are the best for our baby. Thanks for reading!
 |
| Baby Hammar at 20 weeks, 6 days. |
No comments:
Post a Comment