What's That Baby in a Box?

You see that baby in the box over on my sidebar?  You know what that means. 

I am expecting Karina's little sibling in January!  I have been dying to share with everyone but because I had a miscarriage last January, I wanted to keep it hush-hush til I felt more comfortable.  I'm now 15 1/2 weeks or so, and feeling good.  I had terrible morning sickness, just felt sick all day and night until week 10 (although it turned out to be week 11).  I had several ultrasounds at my regular OB's office, and then an extra one at maternal fetal medicine because I'm considered high risk.  I'm 35 and with the miscarriage, I now get special treatment.  I am fine with the extra ultrasounds, but the appointment was pretty scary, actually.  They wanted all this genetic history, but then I had to sit there the whole time staring at this list of possible birth defects and complications that the baby could have.  1 in 25 chance of this thing if you're a carrier, or 1 in 135 if you aren't, that kind of thing.  The main test they wanted to do was to measure the nuchal translucency, which is some kind of space at the back of the baby's neck.  It is apparently a good determiner for both Downs Syndrome and Trisomy 18.  Trisomy 18 is a genetic condition which causes much more severe mental and physical problems and a reduced life expectancy.  The baby did not cooperate during the ultrasound so the tech could not do the nuchal translucency measurement, which meant I had to do the test via bloodwork (lucky me).  It involves 2 blood draws, the second of which is coming up on August 8.  They said everything looked okay based on what they were able to see, but of course we'll know more in a few weeks. 

On the fun side, we've been trying to guess the baby's gender.  At first, I thought it was a girl.  But I won an Intelligender predictor kit at Second Time Around a while back, and so of course as soon as I hit what I thought was 10 weeks (but was 11, so that's good) I took the test.  It said boy.  I was very surprised, because I was convinced it was a girl.  But the test isn't foolproof, so we still have to wait and see.  If it had said girl, I'd be pretty positive, since I had thought it was a girl.  Now, I have no idea, but Karina tells me it's a boy.  I will be able to find out in about 5 or 6 weeks and I will let you know!