Archive for » October, 2009 «

Oct
29
Needles and Needle Results

I have half-completed my quest to be stuck with at least two more needles. As both a preggo and an asthmatic, I’m meet two qualifications for being high risk and for requiring the shot, rather than the nasal spray. But finding the vaccine has been a bit of a pain in the butt. I see a midwife at a birth center, so they don’t have the vaccine, so they refer me to my GP. My GP doesn’t have any of either type and isn’t expecting to get any in, so they refer me to the local health department. The local health department has suspended all public health clinic vaccinations due to lack of vaccine, so they refer me to my GP or OB. The OB group that is handling my ultrasounds hasn’t been able to get any for the workers and doubts that they’ll be able to get any in for patients, so they refer me to my GP. You may see the dilemma. To make matters worse, I’d like to find the single dose, since I’d prefer fewer preservatives.

Fortunately, Jason was able to able to find a local grocery pharmacy that had the seasonal flu vaccine in single dose. So that’s been accomplished. They don’t know that they’re going to get any H1N1 vaccine, however. The nurse at the maternal fetal medicine who returned my results suggested that Snohomish County might be running clinics this weekend. So I plan to trek about a 45-min drive north to Snohomish County to get the H1N1 vaccine there.

And yeah, those results were all good. Blood tests combined with the ultrasound puts me at very low risk for any detectable chromosomal abnormalities (1 in 11,000 for Downs and 1 in 22,000 for the other trisomies). Whoohoo!

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Oct
25
Ultrasounds

While the DVD we got from the ultrasound place was in a proprietary format, so I couldn’t take direct clips, I went old school and video’ed the clips playing on my monitor. 🙂

Enjoy!

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Oct
23
Worth the Wait

There hasn’t been a lot to report the past few weeks other than being nauseated every day and have headaches most of them as well. But today you get something worthwhile: an ultrasound report.

We headed to the maternal fetal center for the ultrasound and first blood test in the combitest. It tests for risk of Down Syndrome, a couple other trisomies, some severe abnormalities, and so on.

The center had a whole host of small little ultrasound rooms, with cute lighting that looked like stars on the ceiling. The sonographer came in after a little while, goo’ed up my belly, and began the wanding. We saw the little alien quite clearly right away, and it was positioned quite nicely to start taking measurements on nuchal transparency. The baby stayed mostly well positioned, but moved around a fair amount, stretching out, swinging limbs, and spinning on the axis of the spine.

The sonographer went on to measure blood flow around the bladder (which was pretty awesome to see), measured length, looked at the heartbeat (171bmp), checked arms and hands and legs and toes, looked at the nasal bridge, showed up all kinds of little bits. The ‘crown to rump’ length was 6.87cm, putting gestational age at 13.0 weeks, rather than the 12.5 weeks I ought to be, but ultrasounds aren’t exactly the most reliable at precision.

It was cool, but weird. I think that’s the operative work for most of this – weird. Since I don’t still feel pregnant outside of feeling sick.

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Oct
05
I’m Back!

I know I haven’t written in a while, but there hasn’t been much to write. I’ve continued to feel nauseated, headachy, and sleepy, albeit in lesser amounts, as always. It’s getting a little bit better, but that means that I finally was able to get to some laundry today, though not kitchen cleaning.

We had our first appointment at the birth center today. We went over medical history, opted for combined test for a couple of genetic things, and had a lot of trying to figure out “due dates” and “how far along I am”. (Apparently, they could backwards from the due date, and things get kinda screwy. We’ll manage it.)

And despite the fact that I’m only 10 weeks (9.5, by their measure), they gave the doppler a try. At first, we didn’t get anything, but within about 10 seconds, there was a very clear “whoosh, whoosh, whoosh” over the speaker. No picture, of course, since it was not a regular ultrasound, but still rather amazing. Freaking weird giggly amazing, at this point still.

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