Good news!

So great news everyone, the perinatologist couldn't even find an ecogenic focus on the ultrasound. They had much better equipment and the hospital and a much much much better tech doing the procedure. So we have a nice normal baby with no problems on the ultrasound woohoo!

The appointment yesterday prompted me to do a post about technicians, such as our wonderful ultrasound tech yesterday.

It can be a little nerve wracking to go into a procedure like that. You just want to make sure that everything is going well with the baby and all that, often leaving you a little nervous to talk to the tech. Always talk to the tech. The tech should be explaining everything they are doing to you. Yes they are there to get the scans, but they are also there to help educate you on what's going on with your baby.

The second ultrasound we had should have been a really exciting thing! And it was, except we got little to no information from the technician. She just sat there silently snapping scan after scan. She may have said 4 sentences to us. Thank God MW's mom was there to help walk us through everything. Not a good experience, but we didn't know if that was normal or if the tech would have been annoyed by our questions

The third ultrasound was the exact opposite of that. Our tech was fantastic! Her, along with an observing med student, talked us through everything that she was doing. She explained what everything was and what she was doing when she was taking her scans. She asked us about the tech who did the scans at the midwife office and was rather confused when we said we had none of our questions answered and that the previous tech didn't even get all of the scans needed.

Overall the third ultrasound was a fantastic experience, although we did have an hour delay. The best thing I can say to everyone out there is ask questions! If you want to know something or aren't getting the info you think you need, ask them. After all its your baby!

Level 2 ultrasound

MW and I heard about our level 2 ultrasound today. Many people don't get a level 2 ultrasound, but our midwife wanted us to get it to make sure that the Echogenic Focus they picked up on the regular ultrasound was nothing to worry about. We go on the 14th of April to see a specialist (perinatologist) and get our scan. I will update you when it happens.

When it comes to extra things like this something that pops up is money. It's very hard for many people to think of money when a procedure is recommended by a health care provider, especially when it is regarding your baby. However if you don't think about money now then it will come back to bite you in the ass later on. If you have insurance please remember to contact your provider and find out exactly what they cover in regards to scans and secondary testing. Just something to keep in mind while dealing with money is to take a second and think about whats going on. In my case usually it works itself out and I end up feeling ok about money.

The second ultrasound

Friday 1 April we had our second ultrasound appointment. I took the entire day to make sure that I was there and on time. However after a GPS glitch (thats right GPS not me) I ended up being about 10 minutes late. Great Great. Luckily for me JF was there to keep MW calm and laughing which was awesome!.

Once we did get there it was very much as I remember the first ultrasound except it was amazing to me how much it looked like a person! As we went through the ultrasound tech, who sucked hard core, was silent about everything we were looking at unless we asked. If you want to know what something is ASK! Sometimes the tech may be a bitch or something else could be going on, but you deserve to know everything!

The most amazing part came when the tech finally opened her mouth and asked us if we wanted to know the sex. I did want to touch a little bit on this decision. When MW and I first spoke about it the conversation pretty much went along the lines of, well I just always assumed we would find out. Some people have very strong convictions on knowing vs. not. I feel like these are the people that get most of the attention. If you don't really know what you want, thats cool. I would def( I cant spell definitely, get over it) say sit down and decide before you have the scan, as deciding then would have been a major pain in the ass.

For us we are having a boy! Woohoo! This was a big surprise for a lot of people as I feel that many thought it was a girl. I honestly didn't care as long as it was healthy. That's right some people don't care if its a boy or a girl, don't listen to people who say otherwise!

The only issue we ran into scan wise, was something called an echogenic foci. An ecogenic foci is a calcium deposit in the heart. What does this mean you ask? Not a damn thing.

According the the Tufts medical resources (Sorry its a bit technical)

There are very distinct features that would be picked up on ultrasound such as bone measurements and facial abnormalities that would be a much higher indicator of a problem such as Downs. The best available evidence suggests that an isolated echogenic intracardiac focus in the fetus of an otherwise low risk woman does not confer an increased risk of fetal aneuploidy [7,37,46-51]. Although some papers have reported that the number or location of echogenic foci affects the risk of fetal aneuploidy (higher risk with biventricular or right ventricular involvement), the general consensus is that these factors have not been proven to matter

We will go for a second scan with a specialist sometime this week, but MW and I (as well as our midwife) are not concerned at all.

We will keep you posted!!