Week 13 Ultrasound Pics

We had our big Week 13 ultrasound yesterday, and everything looked as it was supposed to. I could definitely see arms and legs and a little person squirming around on the monitor. It was very cool. That said, the photographs that we took away from the ultrasound were not too inspiring. Our child looks something like a blob. An attractive blob, but still ...

Here is the wide shot:


Basically, you are looking at the baby's back, which is why it isn't too interesting. The face and limbs are in front where you can't see them. Hopefully, my doctored version of the photo will make things clearer. This is what I think you're seeing:


By the way, I believe the CRL stands for Crown to Rump length. Wouldn't it be interesting if doctors still took this measurement at adult physicals?

Okay, now for the glossy close up:



Takes your breath away, doesn't it? Or it looks like a zoomed in picture of a blob. Again, I've tried to make things clearer with my photo doctoring (not to be confused with actual doctoring, which I am not qualified to do). Here is what I think you're seeing:



Hope you enjoyed the photo spread. We're just happy that it looks like everything is proceeding as it should be, AND that we finally get to spread the word to our family and friends. Secret secrets are no fun. Thanks to our immediate families for keeping their lips sealed for so long.

Now, Mom, go tell all your friends!
(if there are any you still haven't been able to reach in the last 24 hours, that is)

Wait a second. Or five.

Say you had a small container of Trader Joe's chocolate-covered peppermint patties in your fridge. Say the container falls out of the fridge, and during the tumble, the lid pops off and all of the patties (roughly one-third of the container) fall on the floor. Say you aren't totally the best about keeping the kitchen floor super clean. The chocolate is cold and hard, not melty. And your pregnant wife runs in from the other room to pick the patties up off the floor within a very short period of time. Your pregnant wife can still eat those patties, right? WHY WON'T YOU LET YOUR PREGNANT WIFE EAT THOSE PATTIES? 5 seconds! 5 seconds!

The Pregnancy Closet

This coming Friday is my next ultrasound, the one where they check the nuchal translucency. I will be 12 weeks and 6 days along, according to my due date. I had some blood drawn last week, and the blood draw in conjunction with the ultrasound constitutes the first trimester screening, where they calculate the risk of there being some anomaly with the baby like Down's syndrome, etc. G-d willing, everything will be fine, and then we can start telling people. And more importantly, our moms can start telling people. Bravo to our moms for holding it in, by the way. We know it's been tough.

Roughly two weeks ago, the doctor's office called me to tell me that they found that I was a carrier for cystic fibrosis. Oh! There is zero family history of it, so it was surprising, but I didn't freak out. But when the nurse told me on the phone, she said to me "Now DON'T. FREAK. OUT." and I replied, "I'm... not." I guess it's normal to freak out in this situation? She tried to launch into an explanation of how it all works, but through years of college and graduate education in biomedical engineering, I have more than just a layman's education in genetics, so I cut her off because I had already done the Punnett square in my head.

And so there are two ways to look at it. I knew that even if Bill was a carrier too, our kid would have only a 25% chance of having CF. Or, more pessimistically, our kid would have a 1 in 4 chance of having CF. Wouldn't you buy a lottery ticket if you knew you had those odds? Those are pretty good odds. (By the way, it has subsequently been determined that Bill is not a carrier.)

I first learned about CF from this movie. I actually have a memory of watching it at the Gumperts' house in East Windsor during Passover when I was nine years old. I used to think that the life expectancy was not past the teen years, early 20s if you're lucky, but according to wikipedia (so it must be true), it's now like 37 years old. Not quite as bad. Hooray for medical advances! I happened to get all this information about being a carrier as I had just started reading The Art of Racing in the Rain, which was amazing by the way, and you should totally read it. In the opening pages, a beloved dog is dying, and I was in tears in the first few pages (shut up, I'm pregnant). So it was hard to imagine having to deal with the inevitability of outliving your child the way you deal with the inevitability of outliving your pet.

This is all to say that in the past few weeks, I've been thinking occasionally about what would we do if some test result should come back in an outlier sort of way. It's an incredibly personal choice, and author Ayelet Waldman speaks elegantly and eloquently about her and her husband's choice in a similar situation in an episode of Fresh Air from 2009, which I also happened to listen to earlier this week. And as we quickly (yet oh-so-slowly) approach the date that we finally get to step out of the pregnancy closet, it's making me suddenly want to not tell anyone at all, because what if something else goes wrong later? Then any difficult decision we make at that time gets to stay private, and we don't have to explain it to people whose business it isn't.

Don't worry, family: as long as everything comes back okay on Friday, you'll still get to tell.

It just a weird experience for me to have to come to terms with taking that leap of faith that things having to do with the pregnancy -- having to do with the health of the baby specifically -- will be okay. A leap of faith that there won't be some screening test in the middle of the 2nd trimester that comes back positive. That there won't be some freak occurrence of the umbilical cord wrapping around the baby's neck in utero at month 8 and causing a miscarriage. That the baby won't be critically deprived of oxygen during delivery. And I'm not saying that these are things that I am actively worrying about or that are keeping me up at night, because they aren't. I'm sleeping just fine (except for the waking up early to pee thing). It's just that all these leaps of faith won't really be answered until I'm holding a healthy (G-d willing) baby next spring. I mean, I guess if we're being realistic here, this worry regarding the health and welfare of your child never ever goes away, right mom?

Also, a girl can only wear so many flowy cardigans before people begin to gossip, and if I'm not wearing loose clothing, (I think) I'm definitely showing. So if I keep it a secret much longer, people who see me every day are going to think I'm weird. Plus it's pain in the ass to wear flowy clothing all the time. Can't I just wear stuff that lets me show already?!

I'll finish with two stories regarding people knowing & not knowing at work:

1) I was complimented on my outfit last week. A caramel, ruched, jersey top with a cowl-neck, and a black jersey skirt, topped off with my black flowy cardigan. It looked really professional, but was seriously so comfortable that it was like wearing pajamas. But then I pulled back the cardigan to point out to the complimenter how comfortable it was. Mistake! The complimenter asked me if I was pregnant. I was taken by surprise, and we were alone, and she is quiet and trustworthy, so I admitted that yes I was, but asked her to please not tell anyone yet. She has a kid, so hopefully she'll keep it quiet for a few more days. But also, who asks you like that if you are pregnant? What if I had just had a big lunch?! It was suggested by a third party (who knows my secret) that maybe it's a culture-thing. As an engineer, I work with a lot of international people who maybe have different concepts of these sorts of boundaries.

2) Later last week, I was in a room with three other women. We were waiting for a lot of other people to arrive. Let's call these women B, T, and M. B and T both have 2 kids, and M is ~7 months pregnant with #2. B, Mrs. Inappropriate, says to M, "Wow, you're ready to go, huh!" Then conversation picks up as to whether it was pregancy #1 or #2, and they're all comparing notes as to how long their labors took for #1 vs. #2. A few snippets of conversation later, B says to me, "Good information for you to know, Carin!" And in my head, I'm all, "What what WHAT!" but my back was turned at the time getting something from the sideboard, so I was able to conceal my saucer-eyes. So then another one of them asked me if I was pregnant, and I was like "Um... nooo?" I said it more like I was trying it out, like what would happen if I lied? But the bonus is that if you say it that way, it sounds like you are the sane one, and they are the crazy one (which B sort of is anyway). Well I guess I was wearing flowy clothes that day because none of them seemed to think that response was amiss. And then they all started kibbitzing, like "Not unless we know something you don't hahah!" Me: "hahahah!" Inside my head: "Fooled! For now..."

The Week In Photographs

This is a picture of Carin at 10 weeks 6 days. Notice the adorable little baby bump.


Below is a picture of a new art installation in our front yard, an environmental post modernist piece entitled "Arborial Revenge on a Summer Morn." As with all these photos, click on the picture to see the larger version.

This is the view from our kitchen window on the morning we discovered said artwork.


This is our Rosh Hashanah dinner from last night. I post this only on account of it being ridiculously delicious.


And finally, a picture of Carin today, on Rosh Hashanah, at 11 weeks 5 days. Again, note the adorable little baby bump (it's subtle, harder to see in this photo). Also note that Carin is standing in front of our new picture wall. It only took 10 months in our new house to put these pictures up, but they make us very happy.