Saturday, February 18, 2012

Baby #4 at 19 weeks

We had our 19 week ultrasound on Thursday of this past week. Because it had to be rescheduled because of a death in the techs family we had to go for the ultrasound Thursday and the results with my doctor Friday. We took Gabe with us this time as we felt he was old enough to sit still and actually appreciate what he was seeing:). Gabe thought the baby looked like a dinosaur especially when looking at the spine and bones. It was fun to have him with us especially when the baby kicked up its legs and moved its arms up by its head and even opened its mouth wide. Gabe begged to let him find out if the baby was a boy or girl but we stayed strong and are waiting for the surprise. He had said earlier he would know if it was a boy or girl because a boy would have short hair and a girl would have long hair, he was somewhat disappointed to discover this method definitely would not work when he got there.
The next day at my doctors appointment she told us everything looked good, baby we smeasuring a little bigger then my due date but not enough to change it. The anatomy and organs looked good, umbilical cord and placenta were good. The only thing they discovered was the baby has a very small white calcification on it's heart. My doctor assured me it does not effect the way the heart functions or have any negative effects on the baby. It usually goes away as the baby grows so at our next ultrasound around 30 weeks they will check again and most likely it will have gone away. She assured me though that even if it hasn't it will not hurt the babies heart at all. She said that many more of these spots have been discovered lately because of the ultrasound technology improving so much. In the past they probably wouldn't have even seen the spot.
I'm not sure what to think about it as far as it being a good or bad thing kind of seems like some of these things are best left unknown so we don't worry about them unnecessarily. I say worry because of course stupidly in the afternoon I googled the spot and it came up as a very soft marker for Down Sydrome. That of course freaked me out so I began searching the likelihood that this spot could actually mean there is something chromosonally wrong with our baby. I was actually pretty reassured reading the research. Most of the time one very soft marker for Down Sydrome does not raise your risks of having a baby that actually has it. Plus my doctor did not mention the risk of Down Syndrome at all, which tells me she is not concerned about it since their is no other evidence pointing her in that direction.
Mostly I've learned from all this research that many perfectly healthy babies show this little spot on the heart and even statistically there is no reason to worry myself to tears like I did yesterday. Ultimately our baby could show no signs of anything wrong and be born with a chromosonal abnormality or health problem and the fact that we would love it and trust God with its life would not change. We are just trusting God in whatever plan he has for this baby, whether that means like the vast majority of babies this spot is gone by our 30 week ultrasound or that it is still showing up, whether our baby is completely healthy or has some challenges to face it is part of a master plan that we don't always understand and I think it's better that way. So in the mean time we of course will pray that our babies spot would be cleared up by our 30 week ultrasound and that it be a happy, healthy baby but we would pray these things whether a spot was found or not. So without further adieu here is sweet baby #4.

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