I know, I know. My mother says my blog is boring. The trailer park goddess said my blog was slowly resembling that of the sperm donor's. Lunatic girlfriend said she checks my blog every morning when she has her coffee, and what a disappointment it is to find nothing.
I'm not blog-resistant. I think I've been blog-avoidant. So I wrote a couple of posts ago about how I was going for this Ultrascreen test to rule out Down's Syndrome and a couple of other chromosomal disasters. And I think beforehand, "What are the odds that something will come back positive? That's not going to happen to me." And it's not that the test came back "positive"; it's not that black and white. If the normal incidence of Down's Syndrome for my age is one out of every 200 births, my risk is one out of every 191 births. That's the risk of any 37-year-old woman. All I wanted was a healthy child, so the thought that something might have been wrong, even the slightest little chance, was terrifying. And all of the reassurance in the world didn't matter; I was convinced my baby was going to be that 0.52356%.
So, off we went for the amnio. The fun part about the amnio (if one can call any of it "fun") is the lengthy sonogram the precedes it. We got to see a brain, a heart, some kidneys, a stomach, some arms, some legs, and all kinds of other baby anatomy, all of which is on videotape too. The baby even waved at us, and made some funky Spock gesture with it's hand. I didn't see any of the amnio. Thank goodness because the sperm donor said the needle which went inside my stomach was quite large. It didn't really hurt, thanks in part to the little numbing injection which came first. It really more felt someone was pressing down really hard on my stomach. And then it was done.
Didn't Tom Petty sing "they say waiting is the hardest part?" We knew the results would come back in the next couple of weeks, which bordered dangerously close to Thanksgiving. There were several clues that everything would be OK. First, on the sonogram our baby appeared to be about one week ahead of schedule; babies with Down Syndrome tend to be small. Second, my regular OB explained that there is a preliminary test that is conducted on the amniotic fluid which essentially says everything is good or something is wrong; it just doesn't specify exactly what is wrong. She explained that the results of this test are usually available within a week and she is notified right away if something isn't right. I saw her about one week after the amnio and she hadn't received the "something is wrong" call. But all of the reassurance in the world can feel like no reassurance at all. It doesn't change the fact that we still have to wait for a little printout with little pictures of genes to know whether or not things are OK.
Two days before Thanksgiving we got the call. The voice mail from the doctor's office said to call back as soon as possible because she had really good news. I don't think I realized how scared I was until I became aware of how relieved and thankful I was. They also confirmed what we suspected all along.
It's a girl.
We like Anja. Maybe Cecilia for a middle name - that's the sperm donor's grandmother.
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