I’m officially 19 weeks pregnant today! Five weeks until viability – it still sounds much too far away, but at the same time I’m so thankful to have made it this far. Hopefully we’ll be meeting our healthy baby boy 18-20 weeks from now and not a day sooner!
Last Wednesday we had our anatomy scan (17w5d) and the first careful inspection of baby’s heart function to check for any blockages. So far, *knock on wood*, so good. Baby boy was measuring right on track (actually slightly ahead at 18w, but he has consistently been a couple days ahead) at a healthy 8oz and all limbs and organs looked perfect. The ultrasound tech spent a long time looking at his heart and said that so far she couldn’t detect any blockages and everything looks normal. They will recheck every two weeks, including a full fetal ECG with a pediatric cardiologist at 22w.
I read a lot of blogs where women cry during their ultrasounds and I never have. I’ve never really even felt the urge to cry. But for some reason as the tech looked at the heart over and over again I felt myself start to tear up. Something about the image of that tiny heart beating away, realizing it was inside of me, it finally felt so real. My baby growing inside of me….but then she started looking at everything else and I managed to collect myself so I still haven’t really cried at an ultrasound hehe.
According to our integrated screening results our chance of Down Syndrome is 1/13,000 and chance of Trisomy 18 is 1/100,000, so no more testing has been recommended.
Yay for normal test results! This is probably the only area of his life where his parents will be so overjoyed about completely unremarkable test results 🙂 (The kid is asian after all!)
The best part of the scan was that the tech managed to get us some great 3D shots of baby boy’s face and even a 3D video where he lifts his hand up to his face and starts sucking his thumb! Actually it looks like he might be trying to pick his nose but after watching it a few hundred (thousand) times I’m pretty sure he really is sucking his thumb. It was so hard not to laugh as the tech captured it because it really did look like nose picking – but I didn’t want to mess up the image!
Based on this picture I’m pretty sure this kid is going to look just like his daddy! He definitely has the lips and this makes me so happy. I’ve always told my husband that I want a little Paul and it looks like I just might get my wish.
This week, I think I may have finally “popped.” The belly is suddenly unhideable and my coworkers are starting to say they see a little something. I even got my first stranger comment! Of course I was wearing a shirt that totally accentuated the bump and kept rubbing my belly all night (I was volunteering at a networking event for recent immigrant professionals), but still, one of the job-seekers I was talking to pointed at my belly and said, “Oh!”
I’ve noticed I started waddling a bit. I can’t seem to help it, it’s just the most comfortable way of walking for some reason. And I can’t really slouch anymore because when I do the belly feels all squished and uncomfortable, so it’s actually been really great for my posture. I started prenatal yoga last weekend so hopefully that will help with that too.
Everything seems to be accelerating this week, my appetite is getting so much better and hopefully my weight will soon follow now that I’m eating more.
But the absolute best thing is that I’m starting to feel stronger kicks and wriggles more regularly! Probably a lot of elbows too, since this is Paul’s kid we’re talking about (he is forever elbowing me in his sleep). There’s no real pattern to it yet but I savor every kick, punch and elbow.
Funny story, this morning the space shuttle flew by our office window and when I got up to go stand by the window and look, he kept kicking me over and over again! That was the first time I felt him while standing and I told Paul maybe he wants to be an astronaut. Unfortunately his father pointed out that with our vision genes that’s probably not going to work out so great for him. Doh! Maybe they’ll allow surgery corrected vision by the time he’s all grown up?