first, a random... This is an email I got from Emma, the morning of our ultrasound appointment. She had a girls night the night before with a friend of mine and then I picked her up from the friends job on our way to the doctor...

hi mommy i am at ms.mariel' s job. did you eat the pizza ?
mimi thinks that black cat fat cat will go bye-bye.what do you
think? i think he is going to live for 2 months. rebmeber when you white hair in
my hair and you said that it cat fur it was dog fur.
love
emma

Somedays that kid (and the one kicking inside me...) are the only thing that make this crazy life bearable. (btw, we all went to Olive Garden for dinner the night before. She sent her left over pizza home for B to eat. She's such a good kid)





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So yeah.


Had the big ultrasound appointment. I was 19 weeks & 6 days. The tech was very nice, spent about 25-30 minutes looking around, taking all her measurements, with us watching on the patient monitor the whole time. It was me, B & Emma. She was so excited to get to go & see the baby, but I made sure to show her some ultrasound photos online ahead of time. Just to make sure she wasn't expecting to see an actual baby on the screen. About 5 minutes in, she was done. It all looked the same to her & wasn't nearly as exciting as the other machines in the room. B on the other hand, so sweet. Sat next to me, holding & squeezing my hand the whole time.





About half way through the tech goes "I haven't been able to get a good look for the gender, the cord is hanging right between the baby's legs. But that's all I see hanging there, so at this point I'd have to say it's looking like a girl."





Um.


Tell me I'm having a boy.


Tell me I'm having a girl.

It really doesn't matter.

But don't tell me boy at 16 weeks and girl at (nearly) 20 weeks.

That is the one thing that I was concerned about happening.

I said 'OMG' out loud. If Emma hadn't been around, I'm sure it wouldn't have been as kosher.

You have to keep in mind that up until Emma's birth, they told me to expect a boy. So I'm a little shaky with ultrasounds.

So she finished up what she needed to do and then took on the mission to get the critter to move enough to move the cord out of the way.


I turned to my right side.

I jiggled my belly.

No luck.



I turned to my left side.

I wiggled my belly.

No luck.


I laid flat again.
She poked my belly.

B poked my belly.



And then we had it.

The money shot.





I have a turtle inside me.

She took a bunch of shots once the cord wasn't in the way.
Just to make sure.

And we are over the moon.

After the ultrasound I met with my doctor.

She came in, said the baby was still measuring 1 day ahead of schedule (same as he measured at my 16 week surprise ultrasound) and while almost everything looked good, there was some dilation (fullness) in his kidneys that shouldn't be there. She said it wasn't something that we should worry about (AKA freak out over) but that it was something that needs to be monitored. He could require an abdomanal ultrasound after birth, to check for blockage. She refered me to a specialist for a level 2 ultrasound to be completed within the following two weeks & strongly suggested that B go with me. I think out of everything, her telling him to go with me is what scared me the most. (She said it was so that I didn't have to try to remember everything to be able to repeat it back to him, but still scared me)



He of course repeatdly told me "It's fine, don't worry, don't stress, it's not good for the baby for you to strees, she said not to worry, everything is fine."



I of course went home & searched all the possible things that dilated kidneys could mean.



And I found tons. Most of it scary.



The only non scary thing I found was that a possiable reason could be that the baby hadn't went pee recently, just happening to do the ultrasound at that time.

Of course, that's the one I tried to stick to in my head. My reasoning was this: If there's a major issue with the kidneys (or that area of the body), then the fluid levels in the sac would drop. (Baby is taking in fluid, but not putting it back out, causing the levels to drop) Since my levels were fine, I held onto the theory that he just hadn't peed yet that day.



That was Thursday. The following Wednesday I got a call that my appointment with the specialist was set for the next morning. Excatly one week after the inital ultrasound.



That's when I really started to worry.

All this time I had been able to push it aside.

I felt him kicking all the time, so I knew he was OK.

But now I had to really go & find out.

He had been kicking all along with dilated kidneys....

It scared the crud out of me.




.....gotta potty...and need to scan more (super detailed) ultrasound photos... so this one is to be continued.