Second Trimester Pregnancy Update

Wow, talk about falling behind. I'll try and divide everything I want/need to say in a somewhat organized manner. First stop: Pregnancy updates.

On July 3rd, I had my big anatomical ultrasound where they check that everything is growing as it should and that there are no unforeseen problems. It also happens to be when you find out the sex of the baby! And drum roll please.......we are having a BOY! We were both pretty shocked to find that out because for some reason we were convinced our first child would be a girl. Those were Hunter's first words when I told him I was pregnant. However, we are just as excited about having a boy as we would have been about having a girl. The only difficulty: picking a name. Much harder to do for a boy!

Here are some picks of our little guy from that day - I was 18 weeks, 4 days at that point.

The little guy was shy and didn't want us to see his face so these were the best we could get. It was fun to watch him move his little hand to cover his face each and every time the ultrasound tech tried to get a look at it.

A couple things we found out from this ultrasound that were a little scary on the surface, but ultimately fine were that 1) I had a two vessel cord instead of the normal three. This can be a soft marker for down syndrome, but the fetus usually has some other abnormalities if it is. They normally check the kidneys and heart to make sure those are fine and if they are, it is more than likely just a two vessel cord. A little more follow up is required to make sure that fetal growth (more on that later!) isn't compromised, but other than that it just randomly happens in 1% of pregnancies. And 2) That our baby had bilateral choroid plexus cysts. This too can be a soft marker for genetic abnormalities, but is usually a completely normal part of the developmental process - to the extent that our doctor said it may even happen in most babies. The other things they look for when this is found are just general growth issues. If something is wrong, they will see gross malformations and growth restrictions. Luckily for us, everything else looked exactly how it should - he was sized exactly where he should have been and everything was growing as it should. Just to be on the safe side, my doctor recommended a genetic screening test just so we could have a better idea if there was something going on. It too looked just how it should and was completely negative. It took a couple days to digest and a number of google searches before I felt okay with everything, but I did start to feel better about the situation after a week or so. 

Now for a couple belly pics!

Halfway point - 20 weeks!

21 weeks:

23 weeks - It's amazing to me to see how much of a difference there was from 20 to 23 weeks and it is particularly obvious because I am wearing the same shirt.

And 26 weeks....do we think baby had a growth spurt much?? Haha.