Update on Emdrew's Health

Well, today's events were rather unanticipated for bambina and me, but positive nevertheless.

At my routine visit to the obstetrician today, I mentioned that I thought the baby's kicks were less strong in recent days. Apparently this observation along with kiddo's umbilical cord situation was enough to prompt my doctor to send me straight off to the perinatologist (e.g. the ultrasound/maternal and fetal health specialist) at St. Vincent's. So, after hurriedly rescheduling and excusing myself from my afternoon commitments, I hauled myself over to the hospital (feeling mildly ill, incidentally, from the glucose tolerance test I was forced to endure this morning).

Several hours of waiting, ultrasounding, and fetal heart monitoring later, we're both perfectly fine. The umbilical cord is looking more 'marginal' than 'velamentous', thankfully, and Emdrew has put on a second pound during the past five weeks. My OB suggested that it's likely that I'm not feeling her kicks as strongly because of her position (breech). And in truth, even if I'm not receiving many good hard kicks to the gut this week, she is, no doubt, rather fond of tap dancing on my bladder...

Some would argue that today marks the first day of my third trimester. Let's hope we're merely in for the anticipated variety of events from here on out.

The Six Month Bump

This photo was taken today (April 12th). I'm 24 weeks here (e.g. it's been three weeks since the last shot), and glassy-eyed from an oncoming cold.

The Five Month Bump

Andrew took this photo on March 22nd. At the time, I believed myself 20 weeks along, but I guess the new due date would make this 21.

Not Good News

When I went in for a check up at the OB last week, my doctor gave me some bad news. Right off the bat, she asked whether our ultrasound doctor had 'told us about the placenta' and my heart sank.

The doctor didn't name the condition, so it's still a little unclear to us whether she's got a 'marginal' or 'velamentous' insertion of the umbilical cord, but apparently, the cord is attached either to the side of the placenta or off of the side altogether instead of squarely in the middle where it ought to be.

The 'marginal' variety occurs in 7-9% of pregnancies and can potentially restrict the amount of blood the baby receives, leading to preterm and low birth weight babies, but is usually a non-issue.

A velamentous insertion is cause for a bit more concern because the umbilical cord attaches to the uterine wall before entering the placenta, which makes it more fragile. This occurs in only 1% of singleton pregnancies, but is more common with twins and triplets. Again, the blood restriction is a concern, and there's an increased risk of stillbirth since the cord is more likely to rupture.

Here's an illustration:
The cord in the middle is normal. Sounds like what I've got is either the one on the far right ('marginal insertion') or the far left ('velamentous insertion').

It seems as though the cord's blood vessels do not cross the cervix, which is good, because if that were the case I'd have a miscarriage if I went into labor. I think there's still a chance I'll end up requiring a c-section, but, well, we'll see.

That said, this babe is very much alive and kicking. In order to monitor the baby's growth, I'll be having extra ultrasounds (the next being on May 8th), but so far she's oversized if anything. Although I'm pretty certain she's just large, and not older than we thought, my OB adjusted my due date to July 30th (from August 5th) since her bones were measuring 21 weeks at my 20 week ultrasound. Even with her newly advanced age, she is in the 60th percentile. So, she does not at this point appear to be suffering from any real lack of nutrition.

Andrew is going to try to pick the brain of our ultrasound doctor this week, however all we can really do is wait, watch, and keep our fingers crossed. I was very upset at first (and I'm still certainly worried), but since we're seemingly powerless here I'm doing my best to accept it and move on. Allowing the fear and dread to overpower the joy and anticipation whenever this kid squirms inside me is just more than I can bear.

More to come, no doubt...

Sonograms to Date

Five weeks: My doctor likened this to a diamond ring--the diamond (e.g. the babe) being the most important part. It's floating between those two x's.



Seven weeks: One can see a head and arms. Note the similarity to my profile pic (which I painted last summer). Creepy, nay?



Ten weeks: This time the babe was waving an arm (that spot floating in the middle) as if to say, "Hi Mom!" I was impressed. The head is on the left, and the legs are on the right.



Twelve weeks: This sonogram was the first we had done at the hospital, when we went in for a nuchal translucency scan. Obviously, their machine is superior to the one at my doctor's office. The purpose of this ultrasound was to screen for Down Syndrome, which was largely ruled out. Note the hands floating in front of the face. It was at this appointment that our ultrasound doctor first suggested that the baby is a girl. However, since they're occasionally wrong when they guess that early, we waited until we heard it a few times before we truly believed it.



Twenty weeks: Grandma Karen came along for this one. We were at the hospital for a couple hours altogether. Traditionally, the 20 week scan is the major ultrasound, wherein they closely examine all the internal organs. The diagnosis of 'girl' was confirmed, and we were given several 3-D sonograms (which appear below). Grandma and I also got to watch a 3-D video of sorts. It was a little choppy, but the kid was clearly practicing her suckling.






She looks just like her dad, doesn't she? Grandma Karen is surprised by her chubby arms.



This is a screenshot taken with my phone just to show what she looked like in color. Andrew thinks she's got "the Mullarkey jaw" (e.g. a serious underbite). With her parentage, braces are pretty much a given anyhow... In any case, she's adorable and we love her (snaggleteeth and all).

Welcome!

Though we're now six months on, I'm creating this blog in order to document the latent and early life of our one and only.

After about a year and a half of anguish, pain, and countless visits to the doctor, I underwent surgery last October for endometriosis and an ovarian cyst. Within a month (and with the help of some hormones) the little life we'd worried might never be came into ours. Naturally, we're ecstatic.

We've got a lot of sonograms now, so I'm just going to post them in the order which they were received. Happy viewing!