In general, it is not cool to comment on how big a pregnant lady is getting/looking each time you see them.  Especially if you just saw them a couple days before and made the exact same comment.  It is the natural order of things that being pregnant = gaining weight. We don’t need it to be pointed out to us.

As an alternative, when you encounter a pregnant lady, you can tell her, “Pregnancy suits you, you’re looking beautiful”, or, just not say anything at all.

I suppose I can only expect it to get worse from now until I deliver.  Ugh.

We went caroling with friends. We ate way too many sweets at work and at home. We got two new recliners (yay!) for the living room. We had Christmas and spent some good quality time with family. Family shared some of their germs with me and I spent 3 days holed up at home. New Years’ was a quiet affair, celebrating with sparkling grape juice and tormenting the dog with noise makers.

We had our 24 week sonogram last Friday.  Little baby boy (BB) King was uncooperative, as usual, and 3D rendering of the sonogram was difficult.  They did get a good look at his heart again, and said it looked beautiful.  All organs look good, at least from what they can tell. He was still measuring big – 1lb 15oz – so he’s showing his father’s genetics (good for healthy baby, bad for laboring mama!). I also took my glucose challenge to test for gestational diabetes, and passed with flying colors.

Some sonogram images of BB King for your enjoyment:

Face

3D  – Hiding from the Paparazzi; cord in front of his face

3D – Face; obstructed by cord

Up Next:

- Still need to complete the finish up touches in the nursery (Ugh)

- Found a crib, now we just need to buy it

- Making burp rags from fabric remnants

- Making receiving blankets

- Knitting a double-sided play blanket (pictures to come soon)

- Routine check-up on Feb 3rd.

No?  If not, you can still enter a guess since the time, date, weight and length will remain a mystery.

You have? Good for you! But for those of you that thought we were having a girl, you might want to enter a new guess, because WE’RE HAVING A BOY!

Oh yeah, you read that right; we’re going to have lots of frogs and snails and puppy dogs’ tails in our future. I think Charles is very comfortable with the thought of a boy (except for when he becomes a teenager and they start having differences of opinions), and while I have always thought it was high time for a boy on my (Wilkins) side of the family, as soon as we found out, one of my first thoughts was, “What do I do with a boy?”. With two sisters and two nieces it’ll be a little bit of a culture shock to buy blue instead of pink.

In the meantime, we’ll start stocking up on bacon for when he begins to eat us out of house and home.

The nursery? It’s shaping up nicely:

BEFORE

AFTER (Nice boombox!)

A huge thank you to Angie, Ben, Dad, Chris and Donna for helping with the painting, mobilization of supplies and putting up the chair rail. We still need to do a little bit of finishing work, but the major work has been completed.

Up next:

- Deciding on a theme (sheep in space sounds pretty good to me).

- Sanding filled nail holes, caulking chair rail, painting chair rail to match the rest of the trim, and touch up paint where needed.

- Waiting on the January 6th heart sonogram.

We were able to breathe a little bit easier as time went on and they did not find anything out of the ordinary.  The heart looked good, the stomach and bladder looked good, the spine and head looked good, etc.

We go in on January 6th for a more in-depth look at the heart since it is so tiny right now, so we would appreciate prayers that the detailed scan would also show nothing of interest.

Does this mean we won’t get any big surprises come the end of April?  No.  There is still a chance that our child will have Down Syndrome (or some other disorder, however unlikely), but at least we know it will most likely be a healthy baby.

Things to note:

Heart Rate – 153

Approximate weight – 13oz (is this right?  If it is, we’re on track to have a giant baby! Eeep!)

This baby is stubborn.

The baby was facing downward and absolutely refused to turn over no matter how many times the ultrasound tech tilted the table or bounced the detector on my belly, which made getting good pictures difficult.

The baby was not, however, shy about revealing its gender. But we’re going to keep you in suspense a little bit longer. To keep things “fair”, I want to give everyone who wants to a chance to enter our guessing game without adding bias.

To enter the game go to:

http://www.expectnet.com/games/kingclone

Once there, you can enter a guess by clicking on the “Enter a Guess” button on the upper right side of the page. Don’t worry, you don’t need to register or enter any account information to make a guess.

Cheers to everyone and have a great weekend!

Down Syndrome risk went from 1:14 in the first trimester to 1:17 in the second.

Trisomy 18 risk is now 1:14,586.

Open neural tube defect (spina bifida, anencephaly) is now 1:14,586.

Now we wait for the ultrasound on December 2nd to determine what our next steps should be.

Would you like to have some fun and try to figure out what we’re going to see at the end of April?  We’ve set up a site where you can guess the gender, birth date, height and weight of the baby.  Click on the following link to access the game page:

http://www.expectnet.com/games/kingclone

Once there, you can enter a guess by clicking on the “Enter a Guess” button on the upper right side of the page.

Let’s see if you can be the winner!

I had my 16-week visit with my doctor today and we seem to be on track.  Blood pressure was normal, weight gain is within normal limits, fetal heart rate was normal.  Normal, normal, normal.  Words I like to hear. They took some blood for the quad screening, which will give a slightly more accurate risk estimation for chromosomal abnormalities. For my science geek friends, the here are some details about the tests themselves.  Anyone not interested can scroll past.

AFP: a protein that is produced by the fetus

hCG: a hormone produced within the placenta

Estriol: an estrogen produced by both the fetus and the placenta

Inhibin-A: a protein produced by the placenta and ovaries

High levels of AFP may indicate a neural tube defect such as spina bifida or anencephaly.  Low levels of AFP and/or Inhibin-A, and/or high levels of hCG and/or Inhibin-A may indicate Down Syndrome.  Similarly, abnormal levels in different combinations may indicate other chromosomal problems.

It really is just a big guessing game, and I’m not placing too much stock in the results of the tests.

In other news, I’ve been feeling some tiny thumps/twinges and get an occasional sensation similar to what you feel when you’re on a roller coaster and your stomach lurches when you experience the first big drop. It seems like the party is just getting started.

Coming up:

Dec 2 – 19 wk sonogram, where they should be able to tell what, if anything, is going out of sorts. They’ll also be able to tell us what the gender is, if the baby cooperates.

Painting the nursery – What color to paint; there are too many choices?!?!

Our furry child is totally ecstatic about everything that is going on:

The good news is that I am pregnant, and things look to be on track for Charles and I to have a baby in April 2012.

The bad news is that based on the first trimester screenings I am now considered a high-risk pregnancy.

Involved in the first trimester screening is an ultrasound measurement of the fluid at the back of the neck of the fetus (nuchal translucency) and two blood tests – hCG (human chorionic gonadotropin) and PAPP-A (pregnancy-associated plasma protein A).  Laboratories will enter the results from these tests into a computer, crunch numbers and compare them to ladies who are the same age/race/ethnicity, etc. and spit out a risk of a fetus having a chromosomal abnormality (Down’s Syndrome and Trisomy 18/13, to be specific).

My risk of having a child with Down’s Syndrome, based solely on age and race/ethnicity, prior to the sonogram and blood tests was 1 in 371. My risk after the sonogram and blood tests is now 1 in 14. In other words, we have a 7% chance of having a child with Down’s Syndrome. The risk of one of the other fatal chromosomal disorders has increased slightly, but is still approximately 1 in 500.

My blood test results by themselves would not be considered out of the ordinary, however, combined with “bad” results of the fluid measurements in the ultrasound, my risk factors have increased.

For now, this could mean a number of things:
a) I am in that 7% and our child has Down’s Syndrome,
b) our child has some other chromosomal disorder,
c) our child has a heart defect (or some other genetic disorder),
d) none of the above, and we will have a “normal” baby (really, how normal can anyone from our family be?).

To say the past few days since getting the ultrasound results and waiting on the blood test results has been hard is an understatement. Anticipating a joyous announcement to family and friends only to be thrust into a living nightmare has been unthinkable.  For the women that have this type of screening and get good results, it comes as a relief.  For those that get bad results, it brings nothing but stress, anger, sadness and anxiety, making the testing definitely not worth it in my opinion.

The final results are more encouraging than the original statements of doom and gloom, but we are still not out of the woods yet.  As with any pregnancy there is a chance for untoward results: miscarriage, stillbirth, newborn demise; and they say we have a higher risk of these outcomes.

I, for one, am choosing to place my faith in God’s plan.  Coming up we will have the second trimester ultrasound in about a month to measure fetal growth and check for any heart defects.  Until then we wait and incubate.

I would post a picture from the ultrasound, but it’s pretty blurry.

Instead, I’ll leave you with a picture of our other baby: