18 Weeks
This week's update is brought to you by Baby Center and the letters S and P (for sweet potato, of course).
"Head to bottom, your baby is approximately 5 1/2 inches long (about the length of a large sweet potato), and she weighs almost 7 ounces. She's busy flexing her arms and legs movements that you'll likely start noticing more and more. Myelin (a protective covering) is beginning to form around her nerves, a process that will continue for a year after she's born."
Our little sweet potato's growth is right on track. We know this because we had the ultrasound on Friday. We also know the gender of our little sweet potato.
Do you want to know, too?
Ok. I'll tell you. I was going to post pictures from the ultrasound so you could see for yourself but Cat hasn't scanned them in yet so you'll just have to wait for that part.
The fine family tradition continues and we are having another boy! That's FIVE grandsons for Dax's Nana and Poppa. What can I say? We're just not a girl family. And this is alllll good with me because, even though I've been saying that either one would be nice, I've apparently been harboring a deep desire to have another boy. In other words, I'm thrilled!
Dax is also thrilled. He's been telling me all along that the baby was a boy and I should have listened. This morning, he patted my belly and said, "Hello brother." Then I told him my belly was going to be getting REALLY big as the baby grows and he asked me if my bum was going to get bigger, too. Nice.
Those of you keeping track at home may be wondering why we had the ultrasound early. Well, that was the far less exciting part about last week. See, despite being warned against it, I went ahead and had the AFP test done. This is a test in which they measure certain things in the mom's blood that can indicate if there is a potential problem with the baby. It screens for things like Down Syndrome and Trisomy 18 and Spina Bifada. There's a high rate of false positives for this test, especially as you get older. My test results were not what they expected to see so they whisked me right in to take a closer look.
Because of the test results, I went ahead and had the amnio done. It was no big deal at all. But now we have awhile to wait to hear FOR SURE how the sweet potato is doing. Everything looked fine, however, in the ultrasound so I'm trying not to fret about it too much.
By the way, we'll be getting a printout of our son's chromosomes. Because I'm a touch geeky, I think this is pretty cool. They told me they won't be able to look at his actual GENES, though, so I'm really bummed that there won't be a description of what he'll look like and maybe a little sketch, not unlike you see in courtroom dramas. Oh, well. I guess I'll just have to be patient.
Comments
We currently have 4 of the most adorable, smart grandsons so how could we not be thrilled to be having grandson number 5!!
Nana
Posted by: Diana Murphy | September 7, 2007 10:00 AM