Monday, March 2, 2009

Doctor's Appointments

After I got my positive home pregnancy tests, I called to make an appointment with my OB/GYN. I wasn't sure how quickly (or not) I was supposed to see her. They told me that they would set up an appointment with their Nurse Midwife so she could do my first pre-natal exam. I went on January 7th to see her. After I filled out tons of paper work, I went into the exam room to see Lisa. She was a very nice and intelligent lady.


She told me that she was going to request for me to go to the lab and have some blood drawn for all of the different tests they needed to run. She explained about different races/ethnicity having a higher rate of carrying genes for diseases, etc. Towards the end of the appointment she said that she was going to do an ultrasound. I was in shock! It was only 7 weeks pregnant, why would she do an ultrasound? I had just told Cuong that he didn't need to come with me because the book I read told me that all they would do was just check vital signs, blood work, etc. Boy was I wrong!


Lisa went ahead and did an ultrasound. I could see a tiny heartbeat going at a rapid speed. It just looked like a little dot inside an egg sack. She told me that it was about the size of a jellybean!

My second appointment was about 3 weeks later, January 29th. This time my appointment was with my OB/GYN. She talked to us about genetic testing during the first trimester to check for the possibility of having a high or low risk of birth defects. There was also an option to wait until the 2nd trimester to do the testing. We decided that the 2nd trimester was better suited for us. It gave us more of a choice of what would happen even if the test came back saying that there was a higher risk.
My blood tests came back and everything looked normal as far as being a carrier for Cystic Fibrosis or being anemic, etc.
At this appointment they were able to do another ultrasound to check the baby's development and heartbeat. The doctor said that things looked to be progressing normally and that the heartbeat was strong. The baby looked a little more "human" during this ultrasound. Believe it or not, the head is on the right side and the legs were still developing on the left side. The doctor said she could even see a little hand!

Our next appointment is this Wednesday, so we're excited to see what else we can learn!

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