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Tuesday, June 28, 2016

Mid-pregnancy adventures

It's hard to believe but at about 18 weeks I am approaching the half-way point in my pregnancy. I am jumping ahead a little and talking about the half-way point because I am not sure how much time to write I will have in the next month, due to my impending cross-country move.

Yesterday, I had my anatomy scan - a very detailed examination of physical structures in the fetus to look for abnormalities. This is also the scan where many find out whether they are having a boy or a girl. I have to say that studying birth defects for the last two years, in combination with being a "high risk" pregnancy as a result of having type 1 diabetes definitely made me feel nervous if not paranoid about all the possibilities. Knowing everything that could go wrong made it hard for me to convince myself that everything might just be perfect.

I drove the technician slightly insane I think. "Do you see all four chambers of the heart?" "Is the spine enclosed?" "How do they eyes look?" She must have thought I was a little nuts, which might be true. When all was said and done "I passed with flying colors", according to the attending high risk physician. The words "diabetes" and "growth scans" were thrown around quite a bit, but so was the phrase "great A1C".  More or less, diabetes was not in the picture. In addition to the relief from learning that the baby looked perfectly healthy, I was also happy that "high risk" or not, I have felt a deep sense of normalcy during this pregnancy so far. (Aside: diabetes did make itself known later in the day when I was in the 50s, sitting by the fan and trying not to over-treat the low while trying not to panic or pass out. But it didn't ruin my day, not even close.)

Perhaps the coolest thing ever was feeling the baby kick me very hard, and being able to see it  happen on the ultrasound (that moment convinced me once and for all that all the "butterfly flutters" and "twinges" I have been feeling intermittently for several weeks was the real deal). That and finding out that: IT'S A GIRL!!!!!!!


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