Making a Baby: Week 13

Hello again, Internet. I hope you have been well.

I for one am doing pretty good, especially because I did not have a big needle stuck into my abdomen. Yes, that's right, the long anticipated CVS did not happen. Why? In short, because we chickened out. As I mentioned before, CVS (a DNA screening of the baby) is highly accurate but poses some risk to the fetus. After talking to the doctor, we decided to take an alternative route to testing, one that does not carry any risk to the baby. When it came down to it, knowing for sure that our baby was perfect wasn't worth the risk.

Instead, we opted to do a CFFDNA test. That stands for cell-free floating fetal DNA. Basically, my blood is drawn, a search is conducted to find which of my red blood cells has gone through the placenta, and those cells are scrubbed to get the tiny bits of the baby's DNA off them. That DNA is then tested for three chromosomal abnormalities that are the most likely to occur.

We'll also go back in at 20 weeks and have a partial Quad test done to look for neural tube issues. It's then that we'll find out the baby's sex. We are disappointed that we have to wait that long, since the CVS would have told us a whole month earlier, but that just gives my mother-in-law that much more opportunity to insist that we are having a girl - she just knows it.

BUT, while we were there, we got a 4D ultrasound and R got to see the baby and we got to hear its little heart beat! It was crazy active (as expressed by the technician who said, 'Wow, your baby is crazy!'). It shoved its hand in its mouth, yawned, did back flips  stretched, rolled over, and basically showed us that it is already super-talented. A damn genius child, I tell you! The quality of the ultrasound was amazing, and we got to see its hands, profile, kidneys and bladder (they were gray dots pointed out to us, so not readily identifiable, but still - they were there!). R kept grinning and grinning.

In mostly not-baby-related news, we went to Tacoma for Thanksgiving and stayed with friends. It was fun, even if everyone else was drinking alcohol and I was the person having to pee every 15 minutes in between staring longingly at forbidden tasty mixed drinks. While there, my friends two year old demonstrated his complete infatuation with me by insisting I pick him up and declaring his desire to give me 'smooches.' He refused to allow R or any other male besides his dadda to hold him, which made R super jealous. At one point, after R's offer to hold him had again been refused, R said, "Fine, I'll have my own baby and it will love me." [ladies, insert awwws here]

That basically sums things up since I last posted. I was planning on posting a picture of my emerging baby bump, which popped out last week, but I left my camera in Tacoma. It should arrive in the post soon, and I'll  upload a pic then. But right now I've got to go. I have another OB visit. Though they have no reason to do so, I'm hoping that they do another ultrasound.