NT scan

We had our NT scan this morning. It began with a half hour conversation with a genetic counselor who explained to us how the testing works and went over a family tree of health issues with us (she said our family tree was nice and "clean," which was good to hear). Since she was asking about drug and alcohol use, I mentioned to her the day that I was exposed to epoxy for about a half hour. She said she didn't personally have any expertise on that sort of thing, but someone in the department does, so she would get me some information on it. She went over the various chromosomal defects and follow tests, things I already knew from reading up on NT screening.

Then we went to have the ultrasound. I know everyone says this, but it was so cool to see the baby looking like a baby and moving - he (I still think of the baby as he for now) was kicking his feet really hard, and at one point he held up a hand and we could see all five fingers... which is really amazing considering he's just shy of three inches long! In this picture you can just see his head and belly and I think one foot down there:

She also turned on the sound for just about two seconds so we could hear the heartbeat, which was awesome. She took a whole bunch of measurements of the fluid on the back of the neck - they take the largest of the measurements and want to see it less than 3mm. It was 1.6, so that means our chances of a chromosomal defect are low so far, but the blood test will tell us more. The tech said our baby was "being really good" and she was able to get a lot of measurements done without taking too long. Only at one point did the baby turn away and she had me cough to get him to move back.

When she was done, the doctor came in and took a few more pictures, just for our benefit. She switched on the 4D ultrasound, which was a little blurry but pretty cool... from this angle the baby was curled up against the placenta (top left) with the umbilical cord coming straight up and over his head. Look at that long leg!

The doctor was cracking me up because she kept saying, "This is SUCH a cute baby! Oh, baby is SO cute!" She just got a few shots before baby decided to snuggle up behind the placenta and out of view. She told us that this ultrasound can't tell us as much as the anatomy ultrasound at 20 weeks, but it did give us a good idea that so far everything is developing well - brain, limbs, bladder, stomach, all looking good. That was very nice to hear, since I was hoping but not sure they would be able to make any evaluations of that sort of thing.

After that I went and had blood drawn, and that was that. I am so, so very glad we had this done. Of course I was nervous that we'd hear bad news, but I just put that out of my mind until we heard that everything looked good. And now I feel really great about the pregnancy, and so excited. I feel like a cloud has lifted from my head. I just announced on Facebook finally, and yes I'm a huge dork and posted my ultrasound photos there too.