Big Tum II: revenge of the chromosomes

Well it's taken some huffing and puffing, some joy and some tears (and seemingly a never ending set of trips to the doctors) but we're now proud to announce....

Welcome to Big Tum II.

Yup, we're on the preggas bus once more, next stop; kids (plural) city.

And in only 23 weeks time too.

To be honest the past few weeks have been tough.
Real tough.

Like all expectant future mums and dads these days, it was off for the compulsory 12 week blood-test-and- scan.
No wukkas.
Or so we thought.

"They look great" said the scan girl at the horse-piddle, "nuchal skin fold is about 2mm, nice and healthy in the 1-3mm range" she said. Well, more like 'frantically blerted', in between a very worried little Master M bellowing and clinging to mum and saying "sen... sen...", which is his code for "hold my hand and i'll take you somewhere else". (No, we dont know why "sen" means this either; it just does.)

His concern was cute, his cries less so, hence dad took him for a couple of walks through the horse-piddle, including several trips up and down the lift; all two floors of it. There was enough button pressing to get him a job at Grace Bros.

So off to the doc it was a week later for the overall results of the scan and bloods, all excited to get the good news.

Which wasn't so good.

Whereas Mike had come in at the "don't make me laugh" end of the scale (i.e., so little chance of a problem he'd asymptoted at the top and mum was akin to a 15 year old in likelihood of having a problem), these results had gone to the "MMmm.. bugger..." end of the scale (i.e., bottomed out).

"You've got a 1 in 40 chance of a problem; thats high."

Our hearts sank, even though our minds said "hey, thats a 39 in 40 chance everything is fine".

Still all and sundry gave us the scenarios, the gory details and possible problems, and we were bussed off for more tests. Then they tell you the problems with the tests - like 1 in 200 miscarriage etc. Still, a lot boiled down to equations that were weighted by age; something Mistress P is, frankly, not showing.

So mentally it was a tug of war - odds are actually in our favour despite doctors repeating the "high risk" mantra, tests with risks, wondering about the "what ifs" and life changing decisions and then there was the waiting...

Mental torture.

First waiting till we were at 15 weeks so they could do further tests (an amniocentesis) , then a wait for initial "FISH" (it sounds nicer than "Fluorescence in situ hybridisation") gene marker tests (which came in ok, "but its only a screening test"), then finally the big old perve at the genes themselves after a frustratingly long 14 days of cell growing (normally 10-12).

Which of course culminated in being faxed the earlier FISH result again, and having to wait 12 more hours, just to rub it in.
Argh.

Result:
A-OK.

And its a girl; we'll have the set.

So, here we are.
A healthy little bub stretching the belly once more, mum already over the worst of the morning sickness but swearing she doesn't want to do that again (two spews, craving for oranges), well over 17 weeks in and hence a sizable bulge that surely half the population of Melbourne has noticed but has been too afraid to ask (thankfully; well, minus the one lady who rushed up and went for a good old rub much to Mistress P's horror), and a little boy who's none the wiser about his sister to be - we assume he just thinks mums eaten a few too many pies.

The experience wouldnt be complete without the first case of preggas brain. Lets just say that when paying for things online using BPAY, we'll be triple checking the number of zeros on the end from now on. (Anyone want to buy some surplus to requirements x 10 Wesfarmers shares???)

Ahhh pregnancy.
Its natures way of getting you a seat on the bus.
(Wish us luck!)

Postscript:
Forgot to say... due 7/8/9 (i.e., 7 August 2009). Now if that isn't a lucky number, we dont know what is... Print this post