And Then There Was a Bug....

We are happy to announce, providing that all goes as expected between now and July, that we will welcome another baby into our family.  My official estimated due date is July 21, but if this baby is anything like Jenna, I expect to welcome it about a week early.

We have another month to wait to find out if this little bug is a boy or a girl, but my prediction is boy, as much of my early pregnancy 'symptoms' were much different than with both girls.  Other than my own illnesses over the last month, the pregnancy itself is going well so far.  Although we expected a 'concerning' result, we elected to do the first trimester screen again this time.  With Gracie, our predicted probability for Down Syndrome was 1:47, and with Jenna the probability increased to 1:39.  Since I am another 2 years older than I was during pregnancy with Jenna, I anticipated that the probability this time would come back around 1:20.  I was wrong.  Our probability for Down Syndrome with this baby is 1:11 - based on the screen.  We will not do an amnio, but we due to our history with Gracie and due to the results of the first trimester screen, we will have level 2 ultrasounds at least at 20 weeks and 30 weeks, with the possibility of additional ultrasounds in between.  The biggest concern going into the first ultrasound at 20 weeks is the baby's heart structure, as kiddos with Down Syndrome have a high incidence of structural heart defects.  If there are issues with the structure of the heart, we will assume that Bug has Down Syndrome; if there are no issues with the structure of the heart, we won't know for sure until birth.

In terms of our providers, this pregnancy has been a bit rough.  There has been a large change in staff at our OB office.  The midwife that we have worked closely with over the last two pregnancies left to go back to school, and the midwife that delivered Jenna left to take a job much closer to home.  They were our first and second choice for providers, hands down.  A third midwife that we are very familiar with, but didn't work much with, has also left the practice.  So, out of the 4 midwives that were there when Jenna was born, only 1 remains.  There are two new midwives, and also a new OB/GYN, who we have heard good things about.   (There are also a bunch of new, young nurses)  We have had 3 appointments so far... the first was with 'our' doctor, the second was with one of the new midwives, and the third was with the new doc.  The appointment with our doc, as expected, was fine.  The appointment with the new midwife was very, very positive.  She took quite a bit of time to review our history and talk with us about our expectations and anticipations for this pregnancy.  We got a basic plan laid, and we left feeling really good about things.  The appointment with the new doc kind of sucked.  She was running 45 minutes behind (at 8:30 in the morning), and was in and out in literally 2 minutes.  She very quickly told us the results of the first trimester screen, and when we mentioned that we had dealt with high probabilities before, she quit talking about it aside from saying that we would definitively stick with the plan for the level 2 ultrasound.  She listened to Bug's heartbeat (barely long enough to count it) and that was it.  We have heard lots of good things about her, so I was really disappointed with that.  Hopefully, it was only a matter of trying to get caught up, but still.....   I think that we will likely stick with the new midwife that we have already met for most of our care, going with the 'if it's not broken don't fix it' theory.  Overall, though, the experience with the providers' office has been much different.  When we got pregnant with Jenna, they fell over themselves trying to treat us as well as they possibly could because of our history.  Not this time.  Not even close.  I don't expect them to treat me like I write their paychecks, but it would be nice to not have to repeat for every nurse that checks me in (except for a few of the 'old faithfuls') that we have one live baby and one dead baby.  It's in my chart.... in plenty of locations... including the paper that I just filled out at the beginning of this pregnancy, which is in the front of my chart....

Aside from that, it's been pretty uneventful so far.  First couple rounds of blood are out of the way and the first 24 hour urine collection is underway...  Just counting down the days now until we find out if this little bug is a Mister Bug or a Lady Bug.

Keep reading below for an update on Jenna...