January 24, 2011

the day is finally hear! we havent seen our baby is so long! we know, based on the babycenter.com updates that we will see a semblance of a person. the hours are going by SO SLOW at work...finally, it's time. anthony's downstairs. we get to see our baby!

at this point, i am at 10.5 weeks. the earliest you can go into this screening. being the impatient person i am, i had to schedule the appt at the first available date. seeing the baby just brings me such joy.

we head into the U/S room. i ask the tech if she will be able to tell us if she sees any problems. she lets us know that the radiologist will come in after the scan and discuss his findings either way. she scans for about 20 minutes. she points out hands, arms, feet, toes, etc. all the good stuff. she taking measurement, but we aren't really paying attention. we are just watching the baby. basking in the glow of the new addition to our family. wondering the babies gender. how big/small he/she will be when they come out, etc.

the tech leaves for 5 minutes and returns with the radiologist. the first words out of his mouth, "congratulations!" yes, it feels good. but, the next 5 minutes of words will forever change our outlook on the pregnancy. the hopes for our future family. the idea that we might not have a healthy baby.

he explains that the nuchal translucency is measuring thick. and, this is a signal that something is wrong with the baby. that the baby is at high risk for a birth defect. honestly, after those words, everything else was kinda white noise. he just kept talking about having to "go down a different path." using hand gestures of pathways. it really did feel like a dream state. the only thing i could ask was "what is the measurement and what is a normal range?"

so, we walked out of the scan knowing that a normal range is 1-2mm and our baby had a measurement of 3.7mm. not really knowing what this really meant, it just didnt seem good.

i looked to a friend who had a similar experience for more information. she helped guide me through understanding the stats that she'd been given and what all of this means (or could mean) to us and our baby. based on more information, we had reason to believe that this reading could be a false-positive. that, having this screen done before 11.5 weeks could be too early. there was hope! we went to bed feeling terrified, but thinking this could all be a nightmare that could end very soon.