Saturday, February 21, 2009

Second Trimester Here I Come!!


Second Trimester Here I Come!

Well I have officially made it to my second trimester so I am hoping that some of my pregnancy symptoms start to go away. Actually I shouldn't say symptomS because I honestly only have one real symptom and that is not being able to sleep. For some reason with this pregnancy I can't sleep. I am up around 1:30-2:00 EVERY night and usually can't get back to sleep until between 4:00-5:00 in the morning. Then of course Jacob gets up between 7-7:30 so the hours aren't long between getting back to sleep and having to wake up with a raring to go 1 1/2 year old!

The doctors appointment went well this week. We got our "First Trimester Screening" test done which measures this pocket of fluid behind the babies neck to see if it is too big. I have researched this process and the have found that over the past 10 years or so they have determined that children with Down Syndrome have common characteristics even during the early stages of pregnancy. One of them being excess fluid behind the neck and also the absence or malformed nasal bone. They also take a small finger prick of blood and check protein levels and when they take all of the measurements they can give you a "percentage" chance of your baby having chromosomal abnormalities. Before the blood work came back we were in a 1 in 1200 range which is great, but after the bloodwork comes back the doctor feel we will be even better. The baby has a great nasal bone and with the measurement of the fluid behind the neck we shouldn't have anything to worry about.

The baby was moving around like crazy and as you can see from the ultrasound photos the difference in just three weeks in amazing. We actually saw all five fingers on one hand and saw two little feet as well. The baby is about 3 inches long right now and it still amazes me that it can be formed so perfectly and be so small.

We don't have another ultrasound for 4 weeks but should find out what we are having at the next appointment!