Good news!

We fly out to Washington DC early tomorrow morning for a long weekend vacation, so this will be a quick update with more details to come later.  But to bring this up to date, there are 2 good news items to report.  First, my glucose screening test went fine last week so it won't be necessary for me to do the more-involved 3 hour glucose tolerance test on an empty stomach.  While that was good news, today's was better. 

How do you spell relief?  N-O-R-M-A-L.  As in, the maternal and fetal medicine specialist at Presby Dallas saying, "your level 2 sonogram results look perfectly normal."  To recap, the 20 week sono detected a few bright spots on the heart and brain, echogenic intracardiac foci and choroid plexus cysts in doctor-speak.  Don't freak out, they said, but we want to look again at 24 weeks to see if they've gone away.  At 24 weeks they looked again and the heart spots were smaller but not gone.  This time it was "these are encouraging results, should be fine, but we want a specialist to take a look too", so they referred us to the folks at Presby so their higher resolution ultrasound machine could look in better detail.

So today we went to Presby hoping for reassuring news.  First we met with a genetic counselor who talked about what the spots could mean (they are "soft markers" for chromosomal disorders such as Downs, but in isolation seldom are a cause for concern) and discussed options for further testing.  Then it was time for the sono when we got to see all the structures of the organs from head to toe.  Long story short, the doctor reviewed the results and said everything appeared to be developing just fine.  The brain spots weren't there anymore and the spot on the heart was pretty faint.  Given all of that, the doctor said he considered the spots to be "normal variances" and no cause for worry.  Needless to say, we were quite relieved to know that all is well.

Here are some pictures:

That first one is his face from the front, the others are profile shots.  With the dark eye sockets and the prominent nasal bone and mouth he could play a number of villain roles: Skeletor, Hannibal Lecter, and Voldemort for a few.  But he hasn't put on most of his birth weight yet so once his face fills out it will no doubt be cute and cherubic by his big debut.

Here we have continued proof that it's a boy, another face shot, and proof that Daniel has inherited his daddy's wide feet rather than mommy's narrow ones.

Off to finish packing!