August 19th 2005

Guess how this appointment started off? You guessed it; I was reading my book "The Expectant Father" while Kristy checked in. I should explain that while it seems like I am taking forever to read my book, its okay, I'm actually ahead of where I need to be. The book is written so that each chapter covers a month of pregnancy. right now we are just entering the 4th month but i'm on the 6th month now, so I’m a good 2 months ahead of what I need to know and guys if you are wondering, the book has been about 85% accurate for me, it's very good and I highly recommend it.

With that said we didn't wait around long today. They brought us back behind the doors to room "N" and we also learned that there is a big basket right before you go back behind the doors and it is filled with paper sacks. The paper sacks contain special cups and we learned that Kristy will get one of these special packages at every appointment so in the future she should wait to empty her bladder until after we have gone to the appointment.

This time we had a certified midwife with a very happy personality. She called Kristy honey about 456 times in 15 minutes and went over the ultrasound info with us. A lot of the info we again already knew and she answered some questions we had so we learned a thing or too. She cautioned that increased blood flow and maxed out capillaries could lead to headaches and nose bleeds, both of which Kristy has already experienced, ah the joys of pregnancy.

She did mention that at our next appointment they will offer the multiple marker test, which will tell us the risk, not for certain, that the baby may have spina bifida or down syndrome. Basically deciding to have the test or not is based on what we would do with the info, would we have additional testing or would we consider ending the pregnancy? She said that many people make the decision based on their faith and don't do it because regardless of the outcome they wouldn't end the pregnancy. In my mind I was thinking that we wouldn't end the pregnancy regardless of the results because the test only tells you that there is a risk and there are also a high percentage of false positives, but I wanted to wait and talk with Kristy about it. I personally would rather follow my faith and put my trust in god to bless us with a healthy baby and then I thought of my friend Ming and how awesome he is and he has spina bifida and that just reinforced my feelings about not wanting to end the pregnancy early or even needing the testing.

Next we listened to the heart beat. It was pretty cool hearing that rapid whoosh, whoosh, whoosh, whoosh sound and re-assuring at the same time. She said that it sounded great and measured it at 150 beats per minute. The little one kept moving around and hiding behind Kristy’s arteries and Jill (the midwife) said "wow, you have an active one here, playing hide and seek on me". At that moment I was like "oh crap, it's going to be hyper like me", in my head of course, not out loud, but there was a reason why I couldn't have sugar when I was a kid. I remember busting into my grandma's kitchen, my mom's, whoever and if they had sugar cubes I would grab them and go play outside. I would feed them to myself and then pretend that I was the black stallion, because the little boy fed black beauty sugar cubes in the movie. I would run wild throughout the neighborhood for hours.

Whoosh, whoosh, back to reality, I asked Jill if there was any truth in gender and heart rate and she said absolutely not so sorry all of you that have figured the gender based on the heart rate posted on our website from the first ultrasound.

That was it; we scheduled the next appointment about a month later and decided the next ultrasound would be at 20 weeks or 2 months later...

When we were in the car I asked Kristy how she felt about the multiple marker testing and she basically said the same thing I had been thinking but was holding back a little because she was unsure of how I felt, so I let her know that we were on the same page and I could sense a little relief about her.