Fertility Clinic Graduation + Ultrasound

Today I am 8 weeks and 6 days along! We finally had our second ultrasound this morning. We hadn’t gotten a peek at our little one since he or she was only 6 weeks along, so waiting nearly 3 weeks was tough. Fortunately everything looked great today!

He/she looks kind of like a potato in this picture, but when watching the actual ultrasound in progress it was much easier to see the shape of the head and body. We got to see the little heartbeat flickering too. It’s amazing to see how much growth there has been in just 3 weeks! At our last ultrasound all we could see was a little smudge with a heartbeat. Now there are actual body parts!

Crown-to-rump measured 2.2 cm today, which is right on track for 8w6d. The fertility doctor just does a sort of quick-and-dirty peek so all we saw is that the size is correct and there’s a heartbeat, then he moves on to measuring the ovaries and whatnot. Nonetheless, he was happy with our progress and told us we have officially “graduated” from his care. Everything is now in the hands of our OB. We thanked him for all of his help over the past year. It’s been a journey!

Tomorrow is our first ultrasound with our OB and I’m hoping to get a more detailed look at everything. I also have a big list of questions to ask her! I’ve never met this particular OB and I hope we like her. Since my pregnancy is categorized as high-risk we were assigned to a maternal-fetal medicine specialist without a lot of choice, but she’s supposed to be good.

Other happy tidbits:

• Starting today I can reduce my progesterone suppositories to just twice daily, and next week (at 10 weeks) I can finally stop!
• Today I pre-registered with labor and delivery at the hospital where I’ll be giving birth… in 7 months. Ha! Never hurts to be prepared!
• According to a nifty little graph in my pregnancy book, now that they’ve seen a heartbeat and normal growth at 9 weeks, my risk of a miscarriage drops to around 3-4%. If things look good tomorrow we’ll be telling a few more friends and family members.

A somewhat shoddy scan (from my iPhone) of the graph I was referencing. The author explains it in more detail, but basically it amounts to the date at which which the doctor sees a normal embryo or fetus via ultrasound, and the risk of miscarriage thereafter. In agreement with conventional wisdom, the risk drops rapidly and is quite small once you enter the second trimester with a normal-looking fetus. This data was compiled by Emily Oster in her book Expecting Better (which I highly recommend).

What’s coming up:

• Tomorrow: first visit with our OB + ultrasound + doppler
• January 20th: visit with the genetic counselor, where we’ll get the results of our 1st trimester screening test (just bloodwork; we haven’t decided if we want to do an amnio or CVS yet)
• January 27th: nuchal translucency ultrasound (to test for risk factors associated with Down’s syndrome)

I’ll be back with another update tomorrow after my OB visit!