Tuesday, November 15, 2005

Baby Nicholas is doing just fine!

Ok, this morning Tom and I went to our second Level 2 ultrasound. We got another video of it too. First off, he's looking very good. He wasn't moving around as much at the start of the ultrasound, but by the time the doctor was looking he was moving around quite a bit. He's grown a lot, nearly doubled his weight in the last three weeks! He's now weighing 14 ounces and his growth is all right on time. By my calcualation (from ovulation date) he is 20 weeks 5 days and he's measuring at 21 weeks today. Looks good! They went to measure the choroid plexus cysts and the one on the left has already resolved, it's gone, and the one on the right is smaller which is all good. The doctor rechecked everything to make sure there were no other markers for trisomy 18 and there aren't any. Hands, feet, face, head, spine, abdomen, heart, kidneys, cord insertion are all good!

We had the option of doing the amniocentis, but we decided not to for two reasons.

One, I've been sick for over a week now, my immune system is already compromised and with this coughing stressing my abdomen and diaphram I was worried about the cough itself causing complications after the amnio. The doctor said that while there is no specific research on that he thinks it is a good idea to consider it, since if we did have complications we'd always wonder if the cough caused them.

Two, everything else looks so good on Nicholas that we'd really not be able to consider terminating the pregnancy anyway, even if the chromosomes showed a problem. It might be different if he had spina bifida, severe heart and abdomen defects and hydrocephalus, but he doesn't. The choroid plexus cysts show up in 3% of all healthy pregnancies and just aren't a problem. They resolve naturally by 25 weeks and cause no issues with learning or anything. So there really wasn't a reason to do the amnio. (Whew! Cause I mean come on! Big needle in the tummy? OUCH!)

So now Tom will be working on making new DVDs of our second video for all the grandparents. I still haven't figured out how to do a darn screen capture though! But we did get two more pictures from the ultrasound today. The both are pretty awful though! If only I could get some still shots from the DVDs! Aw well. It'll be fun to research later. I'll get the new pictures up soon.

1 comments:

Anonymous said...

Sounds great! so happy the baby is doing so well.
Now, as for the Mother and Dad----some special attention to what is going on in your environment maybe. Angie did you ask your doctor whether you should use the cpap machine if you are so congested? I was told not to if I had any cold type thing. Please check with that doctor who gave you the cpap--please.
How about moving into Jessie's old room, it might be a better feng-shui direction for you ---think about it.
Anyway, I am very happy you decided not to do the needle thing too.
Bless you, Tom and the baby---hope you feel better right away!
xxoo:)Mom---Love you bunches!