Sugar and spice and everything nice...

We'll see about that!

It's a girl!

This picture was taken from my detailed ultra sound, taken at the end of my 17th week. She is sucking on her thumb!

We're so excited! I knew it was a girl. I just had an instinct the whole time. Dustin is so excited to have a girl on the way, it makes me tear up to think about his reaction. I will spare you the rest of the ultra sound pictures. Most of them are very alien like and they even scare me.

Yes, we did find out the sex earlier than we expected to, but not without a little stress to go with the excitement. I'm going to tell this story more as a public service announcement, not as a "poor us, it was so stressful" story. I think pregnant women to be should know our experience. This is a long story so get a snack.

At my 12 week appointment, in the beginning of November, I was handed a lab form on our way out of the office by the nurse. Mind you, this was right after our first ultra sound and we were on cloud nine because everything was looking good. The nurse said to me, "Here, take this to your local lab between the dates of December 7th and the 17th. It's for genetic testing". Ok, I thought, this must be some routine test that everyone does. I never thought to question it due to the nurse's blase attitude and the mere fact that she said "take this". To me, that meant "do this". I will explain why I told this part of the story later.

As a quick side note, I have been very careful this whole pregnancy of not over researching. I have not dove into any books, googled anything at length or called my doctor more than once with questions. I just know for my own mental health that I need to keep the research to a minimum.

That being said, I went ahead, on the 8th of December, and took the lab form to complete the test, as instructed. A week went by and I did not hear anything from the doctor's office. I assumed that no news was good news but I still thought it to be very weird that they didn't call me either way. On the 16th of December, eight days after I took the test, I called to check on the results...

The nurse practitioner called me a couple hours later, about 2pm, as I'm walking into the mall with my mom to Christmas shop, to inform me that "there was a positive on your test. It was for Down's Syndrome".

I couldn't breathe. I couldn't walk. I couldn't talk. I had to sit down.

Now, she followed these statements up with "please do not worry. 98-99% of the time, these are false positives and there is absolutely nothing wrong with the baby". This did not make me feel any better for some reason. I was already in tears and immediately left the mall, as quickly as I had just walked in. I was directed by the nurse on the phone to come in at 11am the next day for an ultrasound to check for "markers" for Down's. I had so many questions, but I couldn't speak to ask them.

My only saving grace at that moment is an old high school friend of mine, Joni. Joni is two weeks ahead of me in pregnancy and we have been keeping in touch through Facebook. She JUST went through this same exact scare two weeks ago. I immediately thought of her because after her ultrasound, they said that her baby looked just fine. Although I hate that she went through all of that anxiety and worry, at that moment when I was talking to the nurse about my "positive test", I found comfort in Joni's story. That was the only thing that was giving me comfort.

As everyone can imagine, the rest of that day was filled with so many tears, fear, anxiety, stress, deep breathing, phone calls, emails...I was looking for any and all reassurance that this could turn out ok. I even started trying to find all of the wonderful things there would be about having a Down's baby. I logically knew that it was not the worst thing in the world, but at the same time I had an animalistic response to protect this baby and I so wanted it to be ok.

The next day, we had the hour long detailed ultra sound. They looked at every aspect of the baby, the heart, kidneys, bones, gallbladder, etc. It was amazing. She is gorgeous already. Bonus: she did not have one single marker for Down's Syndrome. Not even anything questionable. The genetic specialist that preformed the ultra sound reduced my risk significantly from 1/158 to 1/300. She has pretty great odds of being completely healthy. And by the way, the fact that the test was "positive" really just means that there is an increased risk just by the make up of my blood chemistry. The doctor said that I could do the same test again and it could come out completely normal. Ummm, ok? Why do the fucking thing then? Ugh.

After a lot of talking to friends and family, it became clear to me that the blood test I had taken was OPTIONAL. It was not mandatory and come to find out, a lot of women opt not to take it, due to 1.) most would not terminate the pregnancy and 2.) these false positives are out of control. Turns out that so many people I know had a false positive. I was so mad at myself for not researching this more. I wish I would have never taken that test. This baby would be perfect in our eyes no matter what. Why go through this worry??

Moral of the story: AFP genetic testing= bullshit. My two cents, do not take the fucking thing.

Last night, we celebrated our healthy little girl by going out on our first date since I've been pregnant. Yes, it has been 4.5 months since we've gone out on an actual date, sad I know. Here's pictures to prove it (the proof is in the fact that I do not have sweats on and Dustin is wearing a shirt):

Her name at the time of this blog entry:
Lilly Ocean Nichols

We love you already baby girl. Merry Christmas to us. You were the best Christmas present I've ever received.