Boy or Girl..........

During our stressful visit to the perinatologist we weren't really thinking about the gender of the baby and we almost forgot to ask. But thankfully, before we left the room we remembered....and according to the doctor, we are following in the footsteps of all of our friends who have recently had children and will be beginning our brood with a BOY!! Although Ben will tell you that he really wanted a girl because according to him there would be less pressure/stress, his initial reaction at the doctor's office revealed his true feelings. He is estatic that we are having a boy and can't keep the smirk off his face when ever it is mentioned! In the end, we are both just thankful that the baby is healthy.

Second Hurdle

As if staying pregnant is not enough for us to worry about, we had the unpleasant experience of learning all about the AFP Test. The AFP test is a test that is offered to all women under the age of 35 by the State of California to test for birth defects (Down's Syndrome, Spina Bifida, Trisomy 18, and other defects). Wanting to be prepared and hoping for the best, we decided to go ahead with the test. We have a wonderful OB that has spent a lot of time with us these past years and is wonderful about calling us about everything and checking up on us. That said, when we received her call telling us that our AFP test came back abnormal this was one time we weren't thrilled to receive her call. Initially we were told that our test was "low" and this was an indication for Down's Syndrome. The odds went from 1/1100 to 1/275. We already knew that we would have to be visiting a perinatologist since this was a "high risk" pregnancy but because of the AFP results our appointment was going to be bumped up. Three days before our perinatologist appointment we met with our OB and after reviewing the hardcopy results it turned out that our results were not abnormal for Down's Syndrome but for Spina Bifida. We had already discussed the possibility of what we would do if we had a Down's baby but we weren't prepared for the possibility of dealing with Spina Bifida. With a Down's baby we knew that the baby would survive however, with Spina Bifida there are was the chance that the pregnancy would not be viable.

After three long stressful days, we went to the perinatologist and met with a genetic counsler and the doctor. After a detailed ultrasound where they checked the baby's organs, brain, spine, and genitals we were happy to find that our baby was healthy and developing on schedule. No signs of Spina Bifida were present and the baby was given a clean bill of health. We are still unsure of what caused the "abnormal" test results but the perinatologist was not overly worried. So long story short........our baby is progressing as it should.

Finally.....

.....our time has come!! We are happy to share with all of you - our family and friends - that we are expecting our own little zygote. During these past few years, we've had our share of heartache but we are hopeful that our recent run of good luck will continue.

As many of you know Ben's greatest dream is to have an army of Ben clones running amok on our planet........however, he is going to have to settle with a 50/50 split. Here's a picture of our little one at 13 weeks. However, I must point out that at this point it is really hard to confirm that Ben has not really cloned himself and done something weird in the lab and not told me..........we'll just have to wait and see!!

And another at 15 weeks (the baby resembles a little alien in these shots!)............

As many of you know between the two of us we have too many jobs and we are horrible at emailing and phoning and texting and writing and any other standard form of communication, hence, we have created this blog to try to keep everyone up-to-date. (Please note that we said "try" as we may also fail at this type of communication!) For those of you interested in following us in this journey please feel free to check back for updates.......for those of you that are not interested.....too bad.......we can't imagine that you will be able to get away without hearing something about this pregancy in the upcoming months.