The Details

Yep. I’ve got another Babysor on the way. Babysor II, I guess. How did you guys ever figure that out?!?!?

I’ll go into some details in a second, but first, can I just revisit the second photo from Wednesday’s post for a moment?

Look at Emrick’s face.

Something (everything, really) about his face here gives me the warmest fuzzies that ever fuzzed. I just — I can’t.

By the way, only two people actually specified a difference between those two pictures: Kellie (who mentioned the backwards shirt) and Chris (who mentioned more teeth — which wasn’t on purpose, but counts), so I guess they are the winners. I am sorry to say that I ate all of your Thin Mints, though. So sad.

Anyway… back to Babysor II!

I found out I was pregnant on January 2nd, and I am due on September 10. So we’ve got another September baby brewing here!

As of today, I am 15 weeks and 3 days along. And even though I haven’t had a detailed ultrasound yet, I already know the sex of the baby!!!…!!!…!!! But how is this possible, you ask? Well, I took one of those “gender prediction” quizzes online. They ask you when your birthday is and what your favorite color is and then they spit out a gender prediction! Science!

But seriously. I really do know the sex of the baby. At my first visit with my OB, he mentioned a new (available to the public for less than 2 years now) maternal blood test that can be done to determine if a fetus has one of three trisomies. A trisomy is a condition where there are three copies of a given chromosome rather than the usual two. If the extra copy is of chromosome 21, it’s called Trisomy 21 (more commonly known as Down Syndrome — the most common and least severe of all trisomies). This new test tests for Trisomy 21, Trisomy 18, and Trisomy 13. Those are the only three trisomies that ever carry to term so those are the three that they look for.

The test is called MaterniT21 and the way it works is that they examine the cell-free fetal DNA that mixes with the mother’s blood during pregnancy. This is relatively new technology, I think. In the past, your only options (besides ultrasound) were 1) an amniocentesis or CVS, both of which are invasive and come with a risk of miscarriage, OR 2) you could do a blood test that looks at certain hormone levels and gives you a risk assessment. The former is reliable but risky; the latter is totally safe but not very reliable at all. But this new test is both safe (no poking around inside the placenta!) and reliable. By “reliable” I don’t mean perfect. It can still be wrong. There are still a handful of false positives and false negatives, but they are much less likely with this new test than they were with the traditional blood tests because the new test looks at actual DNA from the fetus.

As of now, I think you have to be “high-risk” for carrying a baby with a trisomy in order to be accepted to take this test. Since I am over 35, I qualified and had this test done. It came back negative for all three trisomies. We considered this excellent news, though I am still being a little cautious until I get a detailed ultrasound at 18 weeks. Don’t get me wrong. I am not actively worrying about the baby, I promise. I am just being realistic, and I understand that the ultrasound could reveal an undetected trisomy or some other problem altogether. So I feel good about the test results, but I am still eager for that ultrasound.

Anyway, the MaterniT21 test also determines the sex of your baby. They simply look for a Y chromosome in the maternal blood sample. Since the mother has no Y chromosome of her own, they know she’s carrying a boy if they can find one in her blood. And if they don’t find a Y chromosome, they know the mother is carrying a girl because if it were a boy, a Y chromosome would have been detected (after 10 weeks). Pretty neat, eh?

So when I got the phone call informing me of my results, I was told the sex of the baby!

Although I had been most interested in the results regarding the trisomies, I was obviously very curious to know whether the baby was a boy or a girl as well. I have imagined both scenarios in my mind, and wondered if I really had a preference. Not really. Of course, I thought it would be fun to have a girl. It would be interesting and eye-opening to have one of each, and I’d be lying if I said I haven’t occasionally eyeballed sweet baby girl dresses while shopping for Emrick over the past couple of years. On the other hand, picturing Emrick hanging out with a little brother is pretty darned sweet. All of his hand-me-downs would be used, so we would get to see some of Emrick’s cutest stuff make an encore appearance. Plus, I would be curious to see if a second boy would look as much like me as Emrick does. Or would he be a blond mini-Marcus instead?! How fun to think about!

So. here’s where the torture begins. I know the sex and you don’t! Neener neener. But feel free to make (ONE) prediction. I suppose half of you will get it right, and half will get it wrong. Winners get a box of Girl Scout Samoas.