Dear Baby Bear- week 20

Dear Baby Bear,

So, this week, I have good news and not so great news. You'd think that since we've already had one baby die, that we would be blessed with a picture perfect pregnancy, but I guess that's just not the case.

Your father ended up being able to take the day off, so he did! And that was awesome! I had your 20 week appointment with my OB today- I still hadn't gotten a call about my ultrasound, so I just went to the appointment. I get there, and they ask when it is and I tell them that I still haven't scheduled it! So five minutes after I tell the nurse this, she comes in and tells me that it's at 2:30 later that afternoon- thank goodness I had that appointment at Parkhill (the office), or else I wouldn't have known!

Baby belly at 20 weeks!

The appointment went fine and your father took me out to lunch- we went to Kosmos! I love Kosmos- it's soooooo good. 

Lunch! I forgot to take a picture before I ate it all

We then took the dogs to the dog park to waste some time before your ultrasound. While there, I get a call from a nurse from the MFM office stating that they're running AHEAD of schedule! No one ever runs ahead of schedule! This meant that we could get in earlier than 2:30! 

At the dog park!

Thank goodness your dad had the day off, because this is when we received our "not so great" news. I get up on the table and the doctor puts tons of jelly on my belly (ha! I made that rhyme). He says that if he notices anything wrong, he'll let me know. Of course, my doctor doctor has the final say in diagnoses and what not, but he would give me a heads up. And then he was silent the entire time. I didn't know if I should take that as a good sign or not. The ultrasound ended up being about 45 minutes long, and at the end he says that everything looked just fine. He spent tons of time looking at your heart and somewhere in your abdomen (I'm assuming it was your kidneys he was looking at). I talked with the nurse practitioner who was viewing our ultrasound via telecom, and she said that you were a bit on the small side (greater than the 10th percentile, but less than the 30th) but everything looked fine. Your father and I then left to the waiting area to complete some paperwork when the genetics counselor called us back into the ultrasound room. Apparently, (and this is the not so great news) you have a two vessel cord- a single umbilical artery. Normally, an umbilical cord has three vessels- a single vein, and two arteries. But you only have one- you're already special! We're told that this could, and most likely is, the reason for your small size. We were also told that your heart and kidneys look perfectly fine, and that they weren't able to see any other signs of abnormalities. We will have an additional ultrasound sometime within the next ten weeks to check on your growth again and to double check for anything missed in this ultrasound.

From the small amount of research that I have done so far, I think you're going to be okay. SUA can be a sign of some pretty serious stuff. They didn't find anything else wrong, so there's a very small chance of you having any issues. Right now, I'm only allowing myself to worry about you having a low birthweight and/or being born preterm. If the doctors find more markers, then I will allow myself to worry more, but for now I'm only going to focus on what we know.