33-week Photo Shoot

As it turns out, I get some bonus ultrasounds here in the home stretch. As of my last appointment, the ol' blood pressure had started climbing a bit--not alarming numbers, but up from normal--so our OB wants to keep an eye on this. The risk associated with high blood pressure is intrauterine growth restriction (IUGR), which is what happens when high BP leads to the placenta tiring out too early and  thus the baby not getting full oxygen/nutrients. As a result, growth gets restricted. I will say up front that there is no evidence that this is happening now. I also have no protein in the pee sample, so don't currently have pre-eclampsia. Just high blood pressure that is otherwise asymptomatic. Basically, they want to do quick checks somewhat regularly here at the end so that they can get frequent data points and check his growth. A single ultrasound on its own isn't actually all that accurate for estimating growth, because babies grow in fits and starts, so they do them serially to get a better picture.

Today I had yet another lovely sonographer plus a cute little student who was finishing up ultrasound school (whatever it's called). Always happy to educate. Relatively speaking, it's a pretty quick scan. They measured the amniotic fluid level, breathing, heart rate, long bones, and took a look at some other stuff (heart, placenta, cervix). These growth assessments are scored on an 8-point scale and we got an 8 out of 8 today. Nailed it.

Some highlights:

He was doing "practice breathing," which is really important because it indicates that his lungs are practicing for breathing once he's on the outside and are developing well. Lungs are the last thing to develop and one of the things they worry about with preterm birth, so it was good to see that he's got that whole breathing thing covered.

Heart rate was 140bpm, which was declared "perfect," thankyouverymuch.

He's about 4 pounds, 9 oz--"well within normal range" so no concerns about his size at present.

Baby is currently head down, which is great news and--while he's still small enough to flip back and forth--I hope he stays that way.

Photos! His new position is slightly better for getting a good look, but he's still camera shy.

WARNING: these are the scary 3D images. Do not proceed further if you do not want to see weird stuff. It is hard to get oriented so I will try to explain them.

no photos, please

This one is of his face with his left hand covering his eyes. You can see a little nose and mouth. Right arm is out in front of him but the hand is cut off (by the image...not in real life)

In this one he moved his hand away briefly. She had to snap it fast, so it's not a great image. You still see part of the hand and one closed eye, nose, and part of mouth. And a squishy little cheek.

Can you see it? BA had trouble...let me know if I can explain it better.

I don't know if I really feel like that gives us any sense of what he looks like, and his hands are likely to stay by his face as there's really nowhere else for them to be. But I'll keep trying to get some images as I go for more scans.