I went for my ultrasound today. They didn't give me a little printout of a picture on heat-sensitive paper. They gave me a rewriteable CD with still shots and video clips! I'm to bring it back next time and they'll add more images.
The clip above isn't very long, and I don't see a way to loop it online, but you can clearly see a heartbeat!! Yay! I also had some blood drawn so they can check for something called MTHFR - I don't remember what it is, but I know that some of the women on my loss group refer to this as the M*therf*cker gene. I'll have to look it up.
Other than checking for that, there isn't a whole lot they can do for me in terms of keeping the baby in there. I've got another appointment scheduled for September 6th which will be just past eleven weeks. Then I will switch over to the midwives for standard prenatal care, though the perinatologist I saw today seemed to suggest I could continue coming there for ultrasounds. He was really nice - actually, everyone was.
The heart rate was measured at 173 bpm and I think they said it was measuring about eight weeks; measurements this early are often a little bit off but they don't mind when it's off a bit on the large size. It's when it's too small that they worry.
Here's a picture, helpfully labelled. I was tempted to ask her to write "puppy".
My limbo mentioned earlier is not gone, not by a long shot. But today, I am celebrating, and we'll see to tomorrow when it comes.
Oh!!!! That is such a wonderful thing to see! :) Still sending you "stay put" thoughts, Beth....this is so promising! :)
ReplyDeleteThanks Heather! Promising, but not a slam dunk just yet. We saw the heartbeat last time too. Supposedly the chances of loss drop to between 2% and 5% once it has been seen.
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