Clear NT Scan

January 2, 2008 we had our first appointment with the perinatologist.  The big fun of a baby over 35.  My gp wrote my refferal for 6 visits.  WE all that was so over the top.  Little did we know how close to using all of them i would come.  The extra joy of going nutty and placenta previa.  Thanks to living on the wilds of the Eastern Shore it meant an hour drive to Annapolis to see the specialists that my ob likes.  The group really is great.  The visit took forever.  Thankfully, not all of my visits were that long.  

The first visit comes with all of the paperwork which had been mailed and dutifully filled out by me.  You arrive early and wait.  Then you meet with a genetic specialist.  They go over risk rates for certain disorders and ask about ethnic backgrounds.  My husband is adopted, so a lot of that we did not know.  Well we had a clue with his 2 healthy daughters.  Oddly seeing it all laid out like that made it somehow more comforting.  Then we get an option to add blood work screening which can further rule things out.  We of course accepted that.  Back to the waiting room.  

You are then called over to the ultrasound side, after some more waiting.  That is where the blood is drawn as well.  The us showed what to me was a remarkable amount of detail of my baby at 12 weeks.  Somehow she has always felt like a baby not a fetus to me.  They take shots at all sorts of different angles.  One she totally looks like some sort of an alien baby.  The test itself is super cool they are counting the folds at the back of the baby's neck.  The test is call neural translucency.  The name is kind of funny and feels a little odd on the tongue.  We passed with flying colors.  The blood work would further rule out downs syndrome and a host of other genetic defects.  I think after all of my clear testing my chance was something like 1 in 60,000.  Funny how with medicine it is never zero.  

Even those numbers did not come with a complete peace.  I was still so strung about how baby would get out.  Hope can be and often is a cruel bitch.

Oddly this was the first contracting check we received that day as well.  So that meant a little shopping and a nice lunch whole over the bridge.  With 13 plus months of wildcatting and almost 3 months this fall of no work i am fatigued with the consultant life.  Well really is going on almost 4 years now.  Paid time off and company healthcare seems like some long ago dream.  Sigh it would be nice. Setting your own schedule is not quite the panacea it seems from the other side.  Thankfully work came at the very tail end of November.  Not quite a full calendar or the full rate yet, but it inspires hope.  We are both at this point ready for full time.  2 weeks paid vacation and a week sick seem like some yummy dream.  Maybe this will be the year.  

I will either blog a lot this week or be rather silent.  I have a 6 month checkup and a trip to the pediatric urologist coming up.  Wish us luck with that.