"You BETTER Be Paying Attention To This One!"

Yes, those are the precise words I said to God Himself.

That is, when I discovered I was pregnant recently.

That's right. And I still am.

And for no particular reason, other than God listening to not a prayer, not a plea, but that rather righteously indignant mouth of mine, as of today everything is going fine.

I am almost 12 weeks along today.

I've been hiding under/behind a rock for the past 8 weeks or so since we found out. I've probably puzzled more than a few people by not being around, not going to get-togethers, not doing much of anything.

Part of it was abject fear, not wanting to share any news until we had something good to tell, and part of it was just flat out pregnancy symptoms that include my incredibly tired body needing some 11 hours of sleep a night, and getting it.

So, here's what we know so far.

We did what is called a Nuchal Fold Test -- or Nuchal Translucency Test, which recently gave us some idea of the danger our child was in (or not) without actually doing anything horribly invasive like an amniocentisis or CVS test. The folds on the back of a baby's neck are measured with ultrasound, and at 11 weeks (when we took it) anything near 3 millimeters would have been very worrisome, under 2 would have probably been cause for further testing, and under 1.3 mm is considered ideal.

Our baby measured .9 mm on most of its measurements (they took several), and 1 mm on the last one. Very good results!

Taken with some bloodwork measuring two different pregnancy protein levels, our genetics counselor Joy gave us some figures to deal with that would give OUR baby specific chances of whether it had Down Syndrome (the familiar name for Trisomy 21), or Edward's Syndrome (Trisomy 18, which our son Jacob had before he died last summer).

So, yesterday afternoon Joy called said "We have CAUSE FOR CELEBRATION!"

The results were give to us in two stages -- one to tell us what our "average" odds are if we hadn't taken the test (for all women my age and history), then the results given our measurement and the bloodwork. The important thing is for the chances to be smaller (for example, going from 1/50 to 1/1000).

For Down Syndrome for women my age -- odds are 1/47 on average -- for ME with my test it's dropped to 1/810. She said that's the same as a healthy 27-year-old!

Trisomy 18 -- What Jacob had -- given our history, average odds would be 1/73 -- with my test, we bottomed out, to 1/10,000! She said the chances are even smaller, but that's the smallest number they give out!

I hope that makes sense. It basically all but rules out any dangerous markers for the two major genetic defects we were worried about. We'll wait til 18 weeks to get an ultrasound to look at everything. I am 12 weeks now, so only 6 more weeks til that test. But this was VERY good news.

Here's a picture of our little one as of last Friday. You can probably make out the profile and the leg & foot on the upper right hand side of ultrasound. This baby is measuring a few days ahead (which is a very good sign too), and has a fast heartrate of 163-170 beats per minute that we can already hear with the Doppler my friend Becky loaned me.

As it turns out, old wives' tales say a fast heartrate points to a girl, but personally, I've been dreaming "boy" a lot, so who knows.

All we want is healthy.

So there ya go -- I'm out of the closet with this one. Prayers & positive thoughts, whatever you're capable of, are always appreciated.

But you don't have to shake your fist and yell at God, "You BETTER be paying attention to this one!"

I've already done it, and I'm pretty sure He is.