Pregnant Over 40

I have never felt more grateful for technology than I am now, in the aftermath of yestereday’s “Combined First Trimester Screening.” The scope of this included an ultrasound wherein the measure the width of the baby’s neck to determine risk of spina bifida, as well as a blood test to determine likelihood of other birth defects (specifically Down’s syndrome and trisomy, which I had never heard of before, but is particularly icky).

The office that does this is SF Perinatal in San Francisco. Before you begin, you sign your rights away on forms printed on trademarked letter head that reads Genezyme (TM). WTF, we’re living in the heart of the genetic revolution, I suppose, and before the end of this appointment, I am very grateful for it.

Anyway, C and I spend over an hour and a half talking with a genetic counselor about the gazillions of different tests you can take to determine the health of your baby. These tests are either based on probability (blood tests, ultrasounds) or pure genetic analysis (more invasive procedures like CVS and amniocentisis).

I had an appointment for an Integrated Screening, which would have taken 3 more weeks to get results. After reviewing all the options, we opted for a Combined Screening, which is less accurate but has a shorter results window, with the caveat that if there’s anything even remotely weird on the results, we’ll do a CVS next week. If the resuts of the Combined come back super positive, we’ll skip the invasive procedure til the amnio at 17 weeks.

Then, I go in for the ultrasound. A wonderful woman administers it, and she’s showing us all the different views. The bean is 6.5 cm from head to rump, and is bouncing all over the place in these herky jerky motions OF ITS OWN VOLITION! It looks like a protozoa from high school science class, bouncing and flopping under the microscope. At one point, she turns on the audio and we can actually HEAR the heart beat, along with a graphical print out of the most beautiful beat track I’ve ever seen. 151 BPM for the DJs in the house. Now that’s some slammin’ shit!

Then the Doc comes in and shows us more detailed neck measurements - looks good, she says. Looks good. LAA! She gives us a full-0n DVD of all the images, alas no audio (would that not be cool to sample and put into a dance track??) But there is a little Quicktime movie of the bugger kicking, too!

Here are a couple stills from a whole myriad of images.

The bean in repose: