Half way there!

This week we passed the 20 week mark, so we are officially half way through this pregnancy! It feels like there is such a long way to go still, but I think it will go by quickly (well, I hope so anyway!).

In other news, I'm really starting to feel the baby move quite a bit lately. Every once in a while I can even feel some light thumps that I think must be kicks. I have pressed down where I felt them and even felt a bit from the outside. Unfortunately, the kicking always stops before I can get Daron to feel them. One of these days, though!

Three more days until the big ultrasound! I feel like a kid waiting to see what Santa brings on Christmas morning! I will plan to post the news sometime in the evening after getting home from work.

Since I don't have much else new to post, I'll leave you with a picture of me at 20 weeks. You'll see there's just a bit of a belly these days!

Off bedrest! and Quad Screen Correction

Daron accompanied me to my appointment this morning. Unfortunately, the pressure is not letting up, but since there is no sign of pre-term labor the doctor released me from bedrest. She thinks it's likely that some of the scarring and adhesions from the endometriosis is pulling as things grow creating the pressure sensation. A gal I know at work who recently had a baby after struggling with endometriosis related infertility said she had a lot of pressure from about the same point as I am to the end of her pregnancy. So, it seems that is probably a very plausible explanation.

In addition to that, my hips and lower back are really starting to hurt quite badly. I scheduled a chiropractor appt for tomorrow. I saw her two weeks ago and at that time she told me my hips were very out. We scheduled my next appointment for a month out, but she told me to come back earlier if I needed to. In the meantime, my ob suggested I try sleeping in a recliner, so I can be on my back at an incline rather than laying on my hips since you have to lay on your side when flat in a bed while pregnant. We had been planning to buy a new recliner anyway, so we went ahead and bought one tonight. Luckily, we were able to get a good deal on a floor model and brought it home with us. I'll let you know how it goes.

In some exciting news, it turns out the Down's Syndrome number the nurse gave me was the baseline risk for my exact age and ethnicity (1:161). My actual risk of Down's is ~1:4000! The risk for trisomy 18 was ~1:5000, and like I said in my last post the risk of neural tube defects such as spina bifida was 1:3182 (that's the only actual number I got). If there was a number for trisomy 13, she didn't give it to me, but I'm sure if there was anything to be worried about, she would have told me. She started off by saying everything they measured came back as one in thousands. So, obviously, this doesn't guarantee the baby will be free of these genetic disorders, but at least it appears to be a very low risk. In fact, she told me I had the risk level of an 18 year old!

Now, if only I had the hips of an 18 year old...

Quad Screen Results

Well, much to my surprise, my doctor's nurse called me on Thursday with the results of the quad screen tests already. She told me I screened negative which is good, but she also said the doctor will talk about them more with me at my appointment on Tuesday. The neural tube defect risk came back at 1:3182 (or something close to that), and the downs syndrome risk came back at 1:161. The DS number is probably what she wants to talk with me about. She had told me awhile back that if my risk came back at higher than 1:200 (which is the baseline risk given for my age), then we would do the more detailed ultrasound. However, when the nurse called me, she called it screen negative and said we'll just plan to do the normal ultrasound. My guess is that I could probably talk my doctor into the more detailed variety, but considering the risk is still less than 1%, I'm not too concerned. Daron is going to go with me to the appointment, so we'll see what she has to say and then see where we go from there. I imagine, though, that we'll be doing the regularly scheduled ultrasound on March 3rd. Have I mentioned yet that I CAN'T wait!!! :-) I miss those little peeks we got every two weeks early on. Plus, I am just so curious to know the gender! Okay, I admit, I was the kind of kid that wanted to carefully open my presents that were sitting under the tree and get a sneak peek.

So, all in all, I think it was very good news! The nurse didn't tell me the results for trisomies 13 and 18, but I believe those results should be in the report as well, so I'll ask about them on Tuesday as well. I'm guessing they must also be low risk if they didn't mention them.

As for the bedrest, its going alright. Pretty boring, and sometimes the more I lay around, the more uncomfortable I get. I really wish whatever this is would go away, but I guess as long as it is not meaning something is wrong with the pregnancy, I can live with it.

Lots to post about

So, the good news first - at my appt yesterday, the baby's heartbeat was still nice and strong and healthy sounding. I gained a little more weight than I would have hoped, but the doctor wasn't concerned about it. My blood pressure is still good and my tummy seems to be growing at a normal rate.

They went ahead and drew blood for the quad screen. I won't find out the results until early next week, so everyone please pray that it doesn't show an increased risk of any chromosonal issues. If it does, it is by no means diagnostic, but we'll do a more detailed ultrasound and check for other soft markers of problems. If not, we'll just do the normal ultrasound at 20 weeks. It has been scheduled for March 3rd! And if I haven't said it before, yes!, we will be finding out the gender. I will be sure to post when we know!

So, the not so fun news is that I've had some strange pressure in my lower abdomen. I had it over the weekend, so I called the oncall doctor but she wasn't too concerned unless it was accompanied by bleeding (which it was not). She did suggest the possibility of an UTI, so I did run to a nearby acute care and get checked. The dip stick test was negative, but they did also run a culture. Yesterday I found out it was positive for a small amount of an unidentified bacteria. They said it was most likely that something got in there when I was giving the sample. I was feeling better, so I wasn't too concerned. I told the doctor about it and she agreed that it was probably okay, but she told me to call if it happened again.

Well, this morning I woke up around 2:30am with some pain in my right side, but I also was feeling some tightening or something like that in my abdomen. By this morning, it was definitely that same pressure feeling, so I called the doctor. She decided to go ahead and prescribe an antibiotic for the unidentified bacteria just in case, plus she sent me to the hospital to be checked out. They monitored me for contractions and checked to make sure I wasn't showing any signs of dilation. Thankfully, both tests were just fine and I'm not showing any signs of pre-term labor. The doctor still felt a little concerned about it, so she decided to err on the side of caution and put me on bedrest until next Tuesday. At that point, I'll have another appt and she'll decide if I can go back to normal routine or if I need to stay on bedrest. I am allowed to work from home this week as long as I keep my feet up and don't get too stressed, but lets hope this bedrest doesn't go any longer than this week. I have a long way to go until my due date! I will do whatever it takes to have a healthy pregnancy, but I really would love to avoid long-term bedrest.

So, that is all the news here. I was planning on posting a little more information about the quad screen, but I think this post is long enough. I will post about it later this week or when I get the results back.