It's a boy! The genetic counselor called us about 3 minutes ago!. Everything looks healthy and he has one of each: an X and Y chromosome! She said that there are no genetic abnormalities and everything looks perfect. According to our count, Jeffrey is about 19 weeks along. We're leaving for vacation to Toronto now, and that's the perfect way for us to start the weekend.

Not a whole lot new going on. We're still waiting for the amnio results. We saw Dr. Lim on Thursday. She agrees that our due date may be off slightly, but still doesn't want to change it . She thinks that the blood clot may be the source of all problems, and now that it's gone things should start looking up. We have another ultrasound and doctor's appointment on Nov 1st. Dr. Lim also mentioned that due to the possibility of my having a heart shaped uterus that I may be more prone to pre-term labor. So, they want to keep a closer eye on me. (Big surprise, huh?) They never actually were able to determine whether I had it or not, but they just want to be on the safe side. So, we're still waiting to hear news and trying not to be worried. Dr. Lim said I should be able to feel the baby any day now. It's weird to see it moving all around on the ultrasound and not feel it on the outside. So I'm excited that I'll be able to feel when peanut decides to do backflips in there.

Well, yesterday was a busy day. We met with the genetic counselor and talked about our risks for Downs Syndrome. Normally, at our age you have a 1 in a 1000 chance. Because the long bones are measureing short, they up the chance to 1 in a 100. That being said, both of us have pretty clean genetic backgrounds. We don't have a family history of anything and that works in our favor. Also, the genetic counselor also agreed that our due date may be wrong and that would account for the long bones being short. I think we were both a little more relieved after meeting with her. It helps to put things in persepective that we have a 99% chance that everything will be fine.
After meeting with the counselor we went up and had a level 2 ultrasound done, where they check for 12 markers of Downs, and we had the amnio done. It wasn't as bad as I thought it was going to be. My belly's a bit sore, but no harm done really. They watch on ultrasound the whole time so you can see that the baby is okay. We should have results in about a week and a half. They have to culture cells from the amniotic fluid so it all depends on how fast the cells grow.
The doctor that did the amnio also mentioned that the fluid was low, but it wasn't drastic. They obviously weren't worried about taking some, so I'm looking at that as a good sign.
We see our doctor on Thursday, and hopefully we'll get some more of our questions answered. Until then we're just taking it one day at a time and being hopeful.

It's been a rough week for baby news. When we visited the midwife last week (a loud, animated but friendly woman) she told us that the perinatologist was concerned that the amount of fluid around the baby was near the lower limit of where it should be. She told us that during our next regularly scheduled (every 2 weeks) ultrasound that they'd be checking the kidney and bladder functions.
So we had our ultrasound on Tuesday with Erin Lemke. She's sort of gotten to know us, and has done our last 3 or 4 visits. Peanut was being rather un-cooperative for the camera. We were hoping to find out gender this week, since we were supposedly at 16w6d. Erin had a new perinatologist come in that we hadn't met before. The two of them looked at the heart, kidneys, bladder and long bones. She told us that the long bones were a little short for the stage in pregnancy for where we were, but the kidneys and bladder seemed like they were functioning OK
We left the visit with a bit of concern. In our minds, we've been convinced the entire pregnancy that the dates the hospital and doctor's office has been using were off by about a week or so. By our math, we think we're about 15w5d along. Would that make a difference in the measurements? Were the fluid levels consistant with a pregnancy that was 1 week less developed?
We didn't get alot of answers to these questions - just referred to Dani's primary OB. We decided that we didn't want to wait until our next OB visit to get answers and we'd call Dr. Limm the next day. Well, Dr. Limm beat us to the punch. Her office called us at 8:30am on Thursday morning. The nurse practitioner told us that they had some concerns and would like us to meet with a genetic counselor and have an amniocentesis. Our appointment is for Monday morning at 8:30a. We have a friend who went through very similiar conditions about 20 weeks ago and is due to deliver this week or next. She's given us a very positive outlook on our baby's health... more on Monday.