Pregnancy Update: Fetal Echo & Gender Reveal…

Thanks so much for all of your com­ments, well-wishes, & prayers after the last preg­nancy update! At the end of this past week, we had our follow-up ultra­sound at the perinatologist’s office. The spe­cific test being done was a fetal echocar­dio­gram and it was amaz­ing! Between the two boys and now this lit­tle one, we’d had 8 ultra­sounds prior to this one. We always tell our techs (and doc­tors) about our biol­ogy back­grounds because we find that they go into WAY more detail with us that way. And, the biology-nerd in us have always been com­pletely fas­ci­nated, but this time was incred­i­ble! The baby was clearly SO much big­ger than 4 weeks ago and the level of detail you could see in all of the body parts/organs was amazing!

Since the main goal of the ultra­sound was the fetal echo, there was A LOT of time spent on intri­cate details of the heart. We could even see some of the valves mov­ing! At one point, she told us that she just had one more heart part to see–the aorta (you know, a kinda impor­tant ves­sel). She had a hard time get­ting the angle just right, but then, like magic, it appeared. It was SO obvi­ous and SO cool to see! And, I was beyond thrilled that I could imme­di­ately tell that it was arch­ing as it should be! You could see the blood flow­ing from the heart through the aorta…and then even blood trav­el­ing through a ves­sel branch­ing off the aorta to the neck & head! Incredible!

But, she didn’t just check out the heart. The ultra­sound was incred­i­bly thorough–measuring all kinds of parts and recheck­ing all the mark­ers for Down syn­drome that were checked at the last ultra­sound. Thank­fully, every­thing was the same as before–no vis­i­ble mark­ers! There is even a soft marker for Down syn­drome called echogenic intrac­ar­diac focus (basi­cally a bright spot on the heart) and the baby didn’t even seem to have that! Hal­lelu­jah! Because every­thing was so thor­ough, she was able to get some great shots of baby this time!! I love that pro­file shot (which shows baby snug­gling with its ante­rior pla­centa). This was the first time baby’s head has ever been “above” the pla­centa (usu­ally every­thing is hid­ing behind it, mak­ing the ultra­sounds more dif­fi­cult and is the rea­son I haven’t really felt any def­i­nite move­ment yet), so she turned the ultra­sound over into 3D. Totally incred­i­ble. So, here’s a 3D image (sorry, yes, there’s a glare–it’s a photo taken off the com­puter screen while paus­ing the DVD) of Baby #3’s face at 19 weeks:

Crazy, huh?!

The only “bad news” from the whole ultra­sound is that she did indeed con­firm that the baby’s cord is only 2-vessel (instead of the nor­mal 3). It was really obvi­ous once she got a good angle.  So, there will likely be numer­ous follow-up growth ultra­sounds for that. The Dr. wasn’t in to go over every­thing with us at the end (so we are await­ing an “offi­cial” report from him), but the tech assured us that every­thing looks per­fect to her except for the two-vessel cord. So, hope­fully that’s cor­rect and now we’ll just wait for the game plan on how the two-vessel cord will be monitored.

Now, would you like a gen­der reveal?! We had a pretty good idea going in and she thought she saw some­thing ear­lier on in the ultra­sound, but baby was just not keep­ing its legs at a good angle. So, she gave it one last try at the end and baby finally gave up the goods!!! So, with­out fur­ther ado, Baby #3 is.…..

… A BOY!!

It’s been a tra­di­tion to go out & buy an out­fit the day we find out the gen­der. And, even though we have plenty of boy clothes, I couldn’t resist! These dinosaur one­sies are SO cute and his big broth­ers will love them!

So, crazy, huh?! The Intel­li­Gen­der Test was right and I’m offi­cially a “dude mom”!!