Wednesday, December 20, 2006

He who suffers remembers.

That's what my fortune cookie said last night. Nice, eh?

I had my appointment and ultrasound today with the UCSF people. The prenatal genetics doctor was reassuring overall: she said that they see a few instances of mos.aic tri.somy 20 each year, and her feeling was that if a detailed ultrasound showed no structural abnormalities, then the chances of a birth defect would be closer to that of the general population (4%ish) and not 10%. The ultrasound came back fine (and no clubfoot!), which was a huge relief, especially as the doctor doing it did not speak until she was done with the entire thing. My baby doesn't move much at all - he seems constantly to be asleep - but I will worry about that later.

The next thing to do would be an echocardiogram, which I may do when I get back home - this would just confirm no structural abnormalities of the heart. And I should get regular ultrasounds to check that the growth is okay. As of right now, the baby measures on track or maybe slightly ahead of dates. I would be happy to get frequent ultrasounds, so that is fine with me.

And the icing on the cake was that my insurance agreed to cover this visit - I had to keep going up the chain, but finally I traded messages with someone who agreed that it was necessary and that they would cover it (instead of trying to make me fly back home). I would have gone ahead with the appointment regardless, but I'm sure my adventures today cost at least a thousand clams, so it was nice to get official approval.

All in all, a good day! I will try to be optimistic, even though this might require a personality transplant.

Thanks for all of your kind wishes!!

5 comments:

spark said...

That's quite the fortune cookie!

That is great news that the u/s went so well! Hope that the followup visits go equally as well!!

So so happy for you!!

noela said...

I hate stats -- I really do. I felt so singled out last year by the hateful gods (or whatever) when I managed to miscarry AFTER seeing heartbeats on ultrasound. So, your thoughts on the stats really resonate with me.

I'm VERY glad though, that things are looking better after your recent appointments. Hope that continues!!

That is a weird fortune, btw.

Good, good luck with everything!

xx
Nilla

BigP's Heather said...

Glad it went well.

Growing is hard work, that baby needs rest. Why do you think they are measuring older than they are... No worries.

Brando said...

Glad you got good news. Hope you and your baby's daddy have a great Christmas and New Year's.

Emmie said...

Sounds like you have enough to go on to truly be optimistic--hang in there! I'm so relieved things are looking up.