two in the brood...

short story: i had an ultrasound yesterday and we're having another dude! i'm very excited. derik told me he had his heart set on having a girl so we would have both, but i think he's excited too. it'll be pretty easy on the pocketbook this way!

long story: last week i got the results of my quad screen. i had one with isaac and everything was negative so i didn't think anything of taking it again. but this time it came back with abnormal results. my doc seemed to think it necessary to call me on a friday evening to tell me the news. she said we might just be off on the dates, but someone would call me on monday to schedule an ultrasound. my original ultrasound wasn't for another three + weeks. i'm only 17 weeks along. so i worry about it all weekend and do a ton of research only to find out that the screen has a very high amount of "false positives". i'm sure most of you already knew this...but not me. so i got to scare myself to death wondering if my baby had anecephaly or spina bifida. i didn't do much research on down's because i figured it was a higher count than lower. why i assumed that? i don't know. anyway...other possibilities were that i was further along than i think or having twins. it's also possible nothing would be different.

so i schedule my ultrasound and they were able to get me in yesterday at 2pm. the tech was really great with us. apparently they're not allowed to tell you anything. they give the info to the radiologist (which i think she was) and then the radiologist gives the findings to the doc and then the doc calls you. blech! i've waited long enough! so i asked our friendly tech if she would be able to tell us anything. she said, "it depends". so i told her how i've been freaking myself out and if she wouldn't tell me anything i actually did my research to find out what certain things to look for on the ultrasound to see if it had any of these problems. she just patted me on the shoulder and said, "just let me do my job...my goal is to leave you feeling resolved." very nice. so she took her precious time and explained almost everything to me. that the middle bone in the pinky finger is often a soft sign of down's...as well as the top of the nose. i knew about the liver and the sacs formed for spina bifida. the head was nice and round which seemed to rule out anecephaly...my worse fear. the little bugger was fighting back when she wanted him to turn a certain way. he was pretty funny. she couldn't get a photo of his left foot and said that as soon as she pretended to look for something else, he would expose it. and sure enough, she pretended to be looking elsewhere and he moved just enough for her to grab a picture of his foot. he was so active! isaac just sat there the whole time sleeping or just chilling out, but this little thing was BUSY! we joked how he was going to hit the ground running.

so the conclusion was that everything looked great. the dates are on so i'm still only 17 weeks and there are no multiples. spina bifida and anecephaly were ruled out and because of the size of his young heart, she couldn't get an accurate read on it for down's. but she said he showed no other signs of down's so that was unlikely.

he sure looks like a cute little baby. i can already tell he looks different from isaac. we'll see how that one works itself out. i'll post some pics soon.