A Scare, good news, and then a BIG reveal

Hey, so its been a while since I updated this blog. I honestly just didn't feel like sitting in front of the computer. But as I sit here waiting for my son to SLOWLY finish his dinner I thought I would be productive and catch up all that has happened. So I am now 15 weeks along, the baby is now the size of a naval orange and is doing well. I am now over the nausea and over all bad feelings but now have to contend with headaches everyday. This is something new to me, I don't remember having headaches with my two kids and I know I didn't have them everyday like I do now. But to go back a bit and catch up. We had an appointment almost 3 weeks ago now with the regular OB and then on to the genetic counselor. I was around 12 weeks at the time and my IPs made the trip over to go to the appointments with me. I thankfully didn't have the kids with me that day because Pete was off work and it ended up taking over 3 hours for these two appointments. So the doctor comes and does the usual questions about how everything is going then asks me to lay down so she can listen to the heartbeat. As she does this she can't find the heartbeat anywhere. She assures us that it is sometimes hard to hear this early but she wants to do an ultrasound to see what is going on. I am instantly scared to death but know I need to keep it together because my IPs are right there with me and I don't want them to worry. I try to make normal conversation while they get the ultrasound room ready for us to go to help reassure them that this is completely normal. So after a few minutes they call us over and the nurse looks and there is a beautiful healthy baby moving and squirming around! It turns out the placenta is in the front and was blocking the heartbeat from being heard. It was so neat to see that little baby moving and being so active! After that appointment we went upstairs to the genetic counselor. My IPs wanted genetic testing done on themselves and the baby to see if they were carriers for anything and to see if the baby had anything abnormal going on. Thankfully in the past two years a new test has become standard practice replacing the amniocentisis, which I was scared to death of having done! The new test only requires a blood draw from me. The way the counselor explained it was that though the majority of the blood circulating in my body is just mine, the baby is cre!ating blood and a small amount passes through the placenta and into my bloodstream. So by doing a simple blood draw on me they would be getting a sample of the baby's blood also. They can not distinguish between mine and the babies BUT they can see if anything unusual is there. The major chromosonal anomalies are due to an extra chromosone being present. So if they detect more chormosones then are supposed to be there then they would know that there is a problem. If all chromosones are accounted for and there is nothing extra then they know everything is ok. By default they can also tell the gender of the baby as I only have X chromosones as a female so if they detected a Y chromosone then they would know it was a male. It is all very cool that they can do so much with such a simple test. Fast forward a week and my IM calls me to tell me the good news. All tests came back normal, both the tests the IPs had done, they aren't carriers for anything, and the test I had done, all chromosones are accounted for, there was nothing extra. Which also means ITS A GIRL!!!!!! They are over the moon excited! It is such a relief to know that as far as we can tell everything looks absolutely perfect for this little girl. I am so excited for them too! I know how blessed I am to have my daughter and I am so excited for them to have that. So that is all that has happened recently. I go back to the doctor the beginning of December and then have our. big 20 week appointment and ultrasound the Monday before Christmas. So here's to hoping that everything keeps going smoothly like it has so far. I feel so lucky that things have gone so well for us and just pray it continues!