Thursday, May 6, 2010

Just When I Thought I Knew It All...

I think it's safe to say that I (and my mother) have been to enough ultrasounds by now to say that we're pretty competent in figuring out what they're looking for, what they're looking at, and the terminology they use. But I guess not!

A fellow named Dick called us back for the ultrasound. I thought it might be a little weird having a guy do the ultrasound. Though, when I think about it, it's just my belly (and when it's not so big, it gets seen at the beach, so what's the big deal?). I think I was thinking about when they tuck the towel into my pants, but of course, since he's a guy, he just handed me a towel, and asked me to do it.

He checked the amniotic fluid levels, saw her movements, but had troubles (as sometimes happens) seeing her practice breathing. (Depending on her position, her heart beat, since it's so slow, makes it difficult to tell the difference between her heart and her breathing.) So he tried something else. He went down to her face and looked at her nose. He turned on the Doppler (the red and blue colors that they normally look at blood flow with). We could see red and blue amniotic fluid going in and out of her nose! We saw her take some small breaths and one big breath! It was pretty neat.

Mom then asked if we were supposed to have another growth ultrasound. Dick said that it wasn't in the chart to, but he could do it, just in case. (They had scheduled a slow day, because they had people coming in to upgrade their computer systems.) So he took all her measurements and said that she weighed about 7 pounds 1 ounce!

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