Our First Sonogram

Today we had our first Sonogram. It was at the Overland Park Regional Medical Center so we had a bit of a drive, but this was the closest place where we could get the 2nd level sonogram along with meeting with a genetics counselor. My parents went with us for support and for their knowledge of their past family history, etc. We were in with the counselor no more than 5 minutes...just long enough for her to make our family tree when she noticed they miscalculated my AFP test!!! They used a conception date of 03/15/05 instead of 04/15/05...SOOOO...she said that she wanted them to recalculate it before we continued our discussion. She said she couldn't say if the dates would make the test results better or worse...so off to the sonogram room we went...the doctor that performed the sonogram specializes in detection of birth defects in utero.

So he checked for the major indicators on the baby such as thickness on the back of the neck (looked normal), the size of the kidney's (looked normal), the length of the arm and leg bones (both normal), and even for a 3rd bone in the pinky fingers (apparently it is common for children with Downs to only have 2 bones instead of 3), the heart--he did notice a thickening of one of the valves on the heart but he said that was normal in about 5% of ALL babies and that it was ONLY an indicator of Downs if the baby had other indicators present-which our baby did not...so all was good! Oh and did I mention we found out we are having a boy! :-) The second image tells all! :-)