Doctor's Perspective

I met with my regular og/gyn doctor today to get her perspective on our recent ultrasound findings. In case you don't already know this, I LOVE my doctor! She is Dr. Pamela Promecene-Cook and she's been my doc for at least 10 years now. Of course, any woman that has a baby knows how important it is to have a good relationship with your ob/gyn, and having Connor and now with our new little one, I feel so blessed to have Dr. Promecene.

The summary of our discussion together was very positive. Dr. Promecene tells it like it is, and she spent at least 20 minutes talking with me addressing all my concerns. The first thing she pointed out is that our "risk" for Downs was still actually considered normal. The cutoff for an elevated Downs risk is 1:150 and ours was 1:180, so technically we don't have much to worry about there.

My main concern was the baby's 2-vessel umbilical cord, so I focused many questions on that condition. I told the doctor that I had made the mistake of doing Internet research which scared me tremendously, and she definitely agreed that I should NOT be looking on the Internet -- too much unreliable information out there. In my doctor's experience, she has not seen many 2-cord babies that ended up with problems. She reviewed our ultrasound extensively and stressed that EVERYTHING was perfectly normal and that the 2-vessel cord was an isolated abnormality that doesn't indicate ANY problems at all. But just to play it safe, they will be doing extra ultrasounds just to monitor the baby's growth, which is good news for us because we'll get to see our baby girl again!

The last thing we discussed was the baby's size. I have been concerned for some time about her growth. I'm at 19 weeks and I've only gained 3 pounds so far, and each time we go for a scan the baby seems to measure a day or two behind the last scan. But, my doctor impressed upon me that she is measuring perfectly average -- between the 40-50th percentile for all her measurements. I think it dawned on me today that I've been using Connor as the measuring stick, which isn't really fair because he was a boy and a big baby (95th-100+ percentile in everything)! So I just have to get used to having a dainty little girl and realize that she's growing just fine!

That's about it from today's appointment. Our next ultrasound is in mid-February and we'll be anxiously waiting to see our precious little girl. My prayer for that visit will be that the ultrasound still shows everything as perfectly normal and that the baby will have grown proportionally since the last scan. And thank you to everyone for your prayers on our behalf -- I'm convinced the prayers make all the difference!