Woke up early this morning to the panicky thought that I forgot my doctor's order for the NT scan and bloodwork at my office. Eep. Drove to my office (turns out there is AMPLE parking at 6:30am) and picked it up, and was back on my way to the hospital for my 7:45am appointment. It's 11 miles away. I have *tons* of time... right??
Wrong. I show up at 7:45 on the dot. OHTHANKGOD I wasn't late. I don't want to be rescheduled! Tons of paperwork and then I wait. Waiting is the worst. I have to pee and I'm hungry and I'm nervous and I wish my husband was with me.
Finally, my turn. Into the exam room, up on the table, pulling down my pants and - crap - what possessed me to wear leopard print underwear today? And would a trim have killed me? Sigh.
The tech starts ultrasounding away, and I gush over everything (OMG it's waving! OMG it's bouncing around in there! OMG thumbsucking! OMG it's kicking the hell out of me, why can't I feel that?). We watch the heart beat for a while (164bpm) and she measures CRL about 15 times. Baby is measuring 2 days behind. I can live with that. Tech keeps calling it a "he" - does she see something? Or is that a generic "he"? She won't say.
30 minutes later, it's rather obvious that baby will NOT position him/herself properly for the NT measurement. No amount of poking, prodding, shaking, or tapping is changing this. She let me pee, thinking this might make a difference, but it didn't. Finally she gives up and calls in someone else. The babymover.
Baby's having none of this. 15 minutes later, I'm starting to wonder if it's possible to just flat out fail this test because my baby is being a stinker. All of this poking has given my baby a seriously violent case of hiccups, which look totally adorable to me, but are apparently even more annoying to the ultrasound techs than a non-cooperative baby.
In the next 15 minutes, they're able to measure the NT twice. They write it on my chart, but they're not telling me anything like "bad" or "good." I'm dying to know. They're not dying to tell me.
They usher me into a little room, telling me only that "a doctor will come talk to you" and leave me there for another 10 minutes. I ask if everything is okay, and they just say that I should wait for the doctor. Longest 10 minutes of my life. I think about everything I could have done and how I could have failed to protect my baby. Stupid, I realize. If something is wrong, it's not because of anything I did. But still. I'm too afraid to call my husband because I have no idea what to say yet. "how did it go, honey?" "I literally do not know."
Finally, the second ultrasound tech (not the doctor) comes back to get me and says "congratulations, things look good, here's where to go to get your blood drawn, and here's when you should come back for your second blood draw."
So I have no idea what all the theatrics were about. The NT measurement was 2.4mm today (13w). I'm guessing that's fine? I read that it can be up to 2.8mm by 13w6d. So I'm going to have to assume Peanut's fine, and Lankenau houses the most enigmatic and terrifying ultrasound techs in the populated world.
Meet 13 week Peanut.
No comments:
Post a Comment