First Perinatal Visit

My mother and I went to my first appointment with my Perinatologist today. The place is so comfortable and the lights are nice and dim, and the ultrasound room is huge! We also have the future option to buy a DVD of our ultrasounds so when baby gets bigger I'd love to buy one. The nice part about today was the U/S tech. let us take a video of our own of the baby so that Dylan can get to see (since he works on the days that I have to go).

Today I'm measuring 9 weeks and 4 days and baby's got a strong heartbeat and is growing so fast. We captured some wiggling on our video and my heart melts every time I watch it!

My ultrasound showed that the "blood pockets" that were there last week are much smaller and disappearing as expected. The cyst that is on my ovary though is a bit more complicated than the one they thought it was originally at my OB. Not too concerning though and it will hopefully also dissipate over time.

When my Perinatologist came in I was surprised at how nice and relaxed our talk was. He is very up-to-date on everything I asked him (trust me, there were a LOT of questions) and he shared a lot about his experiences. Anyone who can successfully and repeatedly preform surgeries on little babies inside of the womb (as well as many other things) has my respect. We sat and talked very openly for literally about 45 minutes to an hour and covered every base.

When it came to my history I was actually not too surprised to find out that what I was told last week was not exactly as black and white and I thought. I know that there is a "which came first, chicken or the egg" theory that surrounds the infection/incompetent cervix problem in most cases. He told me that after looking at ALL of the factors that surrounded my preterm labor with Evelyn that I may have a true cervical problem (again, we are back to this). My OB now only went by what was written on my medical history when he told me it was only the infection. But the way this doctor brought everything to my attention made me feel so much more comfortable than the way my OB from 2012 told me what was wrong, so I'm grateful for that.

We went over the plan of action for doing a cerclage if I would prefer to do it early rather than once there is a problem, then we went over that I would be given weekly Progesterone shots to prevent preterm labor starting at about 16 weeks, and then I will be delivering via planned c-section at most likely 37 weeks after the baby's lungs are fully developed. I will also be having frequent ultrasounds throughout the pregnancy to make sure that everything continues to go well, so that means lots of opportunities to see baby :).

In 3 weeks I have another ultrasound to make sure baby is healthy in all areas and then another consultation about where we are and what to expect for April 18th when I'm scheduled for my cervical cerclage. I am so nervous about going to the same hospital that I originally went into when I was in labor with Evelyn and having the surgery done but I know that everything will go well. He even reassured me that in his experience with doing preventative cerclages that he has almost never had a bad outcome after the procedure. I'll be crossing my fingers from now until then that I won't break his record!!