Beck & Ellery: Our Other Baby Pannier

We have ventured into the 3rd trimester! We're in the home stretch and I'm sure the next few months will fly by. This baby has been extremely good to me however we did have a scare back in early December.

After having our "it's a boy!" ultrasound, the results were sent to my ob's office and I was told no news is good news. So when I received a call from my doctor I felt sick to my stomach and Zach's heart sank. An echogenic focus (basically a bright spot) had shown up on the left ventricle of the baby's heart and I needed to see a high risk specialist and get another ultrasound done. I was told that 9 times out of 10 this is nothing more than a calcium deposit but they can't ignore it. Of course this call came right before I was taking off for Mexico, but being with the girls helped take my mind off of things. Sort of.

The following week, while at the specialists office, we were pulled into the genetic counselors office and were told an echogenic focus is a marker for down syndrome and during the ultrasound they would check for other markers such as arm and neck length. My blood work had come back negative for down syndrome but there's still a 1 in 32,000 chance that he could have it. This soft marker now doubles our chances to 1 in 16,000. She proceeded to tells us that we needed to decide that day whether we want an amniocentesis performed and if so, the chances of miscarriage are 1 in 600. She started to explain that sometimes the puncture hole doesn't always heal itself and the result could be a miscarriage. It was at this point the tears started swelling up in my eyes.

During the ultrasound the technician informed us that our baby's arm lengths looked normal and his neck length was in the 71st percentile. Babies with down syndrome are usually below the 10th. The echogenic focus was so tiny it would take a trained eye to spot it on the screen. So, with all of this information, we opted against the amnio. In one hand we had a 1 in 600 chance of losing Baby P and in the other we had a 1 in 16,000 chance of having a child with down syndrome. If it's meant to be, it will be. The choice was clear to us. We already love this little guy with all we've got and the thought of losing him is unimaginable.

I was going to post a picture of "us" but realized I haven't taken any pictures of the bump lately. Will do.
Instead, here's some pics of Miss Ellery Grace...

She's crazy about trains and trolleys so we hopped aboard and spent the day in Old Town...