So at my last appointment (Monday), I went to the maternal/fetal medicine office for my integrated screening. I first had an ultrasound to measure the fluid filled space at the back of the baby’s neck called the nuchal translucency. It tells me if the baby has an increased risk of Downs Syndrome. The measurement was just fine and all looks good.
During the ultrasound, the technician banged the wand up and down on my abdomen a few times (I know… not the funnest thing when I had to drink 32 oz of water before the procedure!) but it really got the baby moving! It was jumping around all over the place! I saw the arms and hands curled up by the face and the legs and feet up in the air (fluid). You can even see the baby’s profile in the ultrasound picture!
There is one thing that I noticed from the ultrasound that was a little concerning. The placenta, which is usually up to the side of the baby, was down underneath. You can see the black crescent shaped thing under the baby in the picture above. The reason that’s bad is because if the placenta is blocking the cervix when it comes time to deliver the baby, it can cause life threatening bleeding for both me and the baby. It is called placenta previa and usually requires bed rest late in the pregnancy if not a hospital stay and a planned c-section at 37 weeks! Yikes! The good news is that 80-90% of the time when the placenta is low in the first trimester, it moves up higher in the second and third. So I’m not going to stress out about it too much yet, but it is definitely something that I’m going to watch closely in the future.
After the ultrasound I went for a blood draw. It is usually uneventful, but this time I got lucky and got a student… He missed in both arms and, after fishing around in my arm with the needle, called for help. The girls who came to help couldn’t use the same veins that the student was trying for so she decided to try a small surface vein in my right arm. Well, she got it in just fine and was about half way to filling the tube when the vein decided to bleed out onto my arm instead of through the needle and into the tube. That of course meant she had to scrap that tube and try a new vein. Ugh. So to my chagrin she decided that my hand was the best place. The tubes were filled uneventfully but it still hurts a little and I have a nice bruise for it. I just have to tell myself it’s for the baby.
They will do another blood draw in the second trimester and use the combined results to tell me if I’m at risk for Downs, Trisomy or Neural Tube defects. I’ll also find out if I’m a carrier for Cystic Fibrosis. I know, it sounds terribly exciting, but I’ll get any test that is non-invasive and could possibly help my baby be healthier when it’s born!
Next regular appointment, Monday the 20th!
Congrats! Glad everything went well at your NT screening... I still need to post about mine. They had so much trouble getting him to move! She kept pushing on my uterus but unlike you I didn't have to drink that much water before! What a bummer. Any guesses on the gender? Ours looked like a boy.
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