Anyone who has had a baby will know that between 18-20 weeks you have a 'foetal anatomy scan' which, as the name suggests, examines the baby's major structures to look for defects. They check out everything from the brain through to the arteries that supply the kidneys. They can also determine the sex at this scan... but that wasn't the thing occupying my mind.
I am the baby of the family and my sister Penny is the eldest... but for about 18 months in the early 1980's there was a middle child. Jo-Anne was our other sister and she was born with a hole in heart. I don't remember her, I was too little, but we have some lovely photos of the three of us to remind us she was with us for a short while. My family has a morbid sense of humour at the best of times, but when the topic turns to illness or death, it brings out the worst of the jokes, hence my mum always says that she had a rainbow family (way before Angelina Jolie made it cool) because Penny was normal, Jo-Anne was sick and I was jaundiced so she had a pink baby, a blue baby and a yellow baby!
So going for the scan this morning, the foremost thought in my head was concerning Tricky's heart, and if they would be able to detect any abnormalities. Knowing the family history, we were sent to a specialist antenatal sonographer and she spent about one third of the whole visit concentrating on the heart... and I'm happy to say it looks good! The technology today, a full 30 year's after Jo-Anne's birth, is so much more advanced that if Tricky does have a minor hole that was unable to be seen on the ultrasound (a very minor possibility), chances are good that it would be able to be fixed *Insert sigh of relief here*.
So with no phunking of the heart, there were other things that we wanted to know... like the sex of the baby! The sonographer asked us before she started if we wanted to know and we excitedly said that we did. She looked relieved and said “Phew, sometimes it's hard for me to hide the important parts” as if by some miracle Hubby and I could decipher the blobs on the screen. I can see head, legs, arms and a spine... that's about it. I'm still not convinced it's not an alien by the looks of it. So on goes the warmed up goo (ooh that's so much nicer than the stone cold stuff they sometimes use), the hand held part is placed on my tummy and within about three seconds... “It's a boy!”
The relief I felt is hard to describe. I wouldn't have minded either way, but I'd already started calling Tricky a 'he' and planning in my head for a boy. Even on my Christmas card from Hubby he wrote “from your (current) boys” because he was including our dog. What would I have done if it was a girl? The night before the thought of a baby girl had actually kept me awake for a while. I'm sure it would have only taken minutes to adjust... no, really I'm sure... well I guess I don't have to worry. Unless the sonographer got it wrong? Oh dear.
it was only ever going to be a boy. Now how old does he have to be before we can put him in a V8 supercar?
ReplyDeleteMy sister had/has a hole in her heart too, they only found it when her ticker was playing up while she was pregnant, but it's been plugged up now. Here's hoping Tricky has a long and medically uneventful life (aside from the current issues, which will hopefully get better).
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