One Day I'll Have A Flawless Appointment

I am determined to, one day, have an entirely normal baby appointment, but apparently today was not that day. I think Baby Declan just likes having his picture being taken.

Oh, I suppose I haven't officially announced this: We feel pretty confident that Little Baby's first name is Declan! We're not sure about middle names yet. Declan (pronounced Dek-lin) is Irish, and it means "man of prayer," which we really liked. That's what I hope for my son-- that he'll be a man of prayer.

Anyway, back to the appointment news. I met with a different doctor today; they're trying to introduce me to all of the doctors on staff so that I'm familiar with whomever happens to be on call the day labor occurs. They did an ultrasound in order to get pictures of baby's nose and lips. His nose was apparently really hard to find, but we got there in the end. :) Declan had his foot in his mouth today, which I thought was adorable!

After that I met with the new doctor, who was really nice, despite the fact she couldn't give me a clean report. Apparently (from what I can understand-- doctors speak their own language) they spotted an atypical coloring on the ultrasound. I'm pretty sure she said his bowel, which is normally a grayish tone, was bright-- more close to the color of his bones than anything else. She said sometimes this can be an indicator of either cystic fibrosis or down syndrome. We'd opted to have the cystic fibrosis test done, but not the down syndrome. She immediately ruled out cystic fibrosis, since that test was negative, but said it could still be an indicator of down syndrome.

Now, here's the impression I got: She wasn't very pleased with me for opting against the down syndrome test. In fact, none of the doctors were. They all kind of told me "it's your choice, we're not pushing you one way or the other," but they were. One of my doctors even said "you know, we have a no return policy here, so we encourage you to take the test." The implication was essentially that I should do the test so I could abort if I so chose. So, I was not surprised when my doctor today was displeased with me for not having done the test. And  the impression I got was that her warning that it could be an implication of down syndrome was said a little moodily, as in "if you'd just done the test we could rule it out right now."

But I hadn't done the test. So they're sending me back to the specialist for another ultrasound to make sure everything still looks good to the specialist.

Perhaps I'm frustrated because I'm just about six months pregnant, but by the time I left the office today I was a little bit fed up. I had to meet with the nurse so she could help set up my specialist appointment. I had to meet with the lab techs so they could run more tests. I had to meet with the technician so she could confirm what she noted on the ultrasound. And with the exception of the technician, I was mostly regarded as an inconvenience. Everybody who I came into contact with rolled their eyes at me for not having done this simple test.

Well, you know what? I think I've literally heard scary news every time I've been in that office. I hate going, at this point, because I go alone and can never anticipate a painless visit. And maybe it would have been easier had I just done the test in the first place, but I didn't, and now you're telling me my son could be at risk in the same breath as you're scolding me in.

By the end of my visit,when the nurse was ordering my urine sample, she bid me goodbye with "and try not to mess up your urine sample." I bit my tongue and promised I wouldn't, but I was secretly thinking, "why yes, I have narcotics here in my pocket that I'm planning to ingest prior to peeing in the cup, just so you'll have to run another one."

Other than THAT, however, the visit was positive. I'm not complaining about getting to see my baby again, and hopefully the specialist will say the same thing he said before-- that Declan looks great and he's not concerned. He looked good today (besides his bowel, and whose bowel ever looks fantastic anyway?), and is actually measuring eight days ahead of schedule. The projected due date based off of his measurements today put us at July 9th! Crazy! Also, my blood pressure was awesome today, so praise God.

I hope everyone is having a blessed week, and we appreciate all the people praying for our beautiful son!