the 17th week

I had a doctor's appointment today, and as far as doctor's appointments go it was set up to be pretty uneventful. This was the blood test appointment, where I get to pay Lab Corp $200 to tell me if my kid has Down's Syndrome, and they get to be wrong 20% of the time. Some people told me not to bother with this test, but I pretty much go with the flow and if my doctor wants me to get it, I'll get it. Besides, even if a false positive sprang up, I wouldn't be mad. I'd probably just be appreciative that they then had to check everything out even that much more closely.

I had a "genius" moment last night before falling asleep concerning the heartbeat. See, we have a digital recorder somewhere in this house, but of course the only time it ever serves a function I can't find it. So, I really want to record the heartbeat, and I was trying to think of alternatives. I was all set to go in with my blackberry and record a voice note. However, I did wonder about the distortion of later trying to record it to the computer. Aha! We have vonage! Whenever we get a voicemail, it sends the voicemail message to Josh's email as a wav file. And Dr. Aliff saw no problem in letting me leave a voicemail message to myself of my baby's heartbeat.

But the doppler machine they normally use had interference from the cell phone - it's always something around here! So, being the awesome doctor she is (I'm assuming from our one meeting), she dragged in the sonogram machine and got the heartbeat from there. Now, the only sonogram/ultrasound I've ever gotten was at 8 weeks and the baby was really just a glorified tadpole at that point. But, these pictures were incredible. I was in love! The baby was moving around so much - punching its little arms and then laying them on either side of its head. I saw the little skeleton bones of the hands and feet, saw the eyes and mouth, and saw that the baby looks as my baby books say it should. Whew! And Dr. Aliff asked me if we were finding out the sex and I said yes and she said she knew what it was. But of course I told Josh not to bother with this appointment since it was only a blood test, so I told her we'd wait until the big tour o'uterus in 3 weeks so we could be told together.

The funny thing is, Josh and I had a conversation about hermaphrodites last night. A "what if" series that ended with the possibility that you might have to choose your child's gender and how the experts say to wait and see what develops and how hard that must be as a parent for someone to ask "boy or girl?" and you to respond "wish we knew." So my big relief was that if Dr. Aliff knew what it was, and wasn't calling in the specialists, then I'm pretty sure that it's one OR the other. I need to stop watching TLC specials!

So, here's me today, at 17 weeks. Gender 101 set for March 30th at 1:00 p.m.!!! And of course also the check of the major organs, spine, bones, etc. Also, I felt the baby for the first time last Thursday, and again tonight, so after the big sonogram in 3 weeks I may finally believe that there's a baby in there and that it is healthy and perfect.