The "big" anatomy ultrasound

Yesterday was our anatomy ultrasound. This is the point in the pregnancy when we learned that Thomas had his heart defect, so Tim and I have been nervous wrecks...

I woke up too early Tuesday morning, ended up feeling a little sick to my stomach, tried to sleep in after breakfast, then headed off to the appointment with Tim. It was at 9:45am, at 10:15 the tech finally came out and told me she wanted me to wait to draw my bloodwork first! I'm thinking, doesn't she know we are anxious??!

Anyhoo... we finally got in for the scan, she started with every body part and left the heart for last! But both babies have good looking four chamber hearts. With Thomas, his just looked like a two-chamber heart, so the difference was really clear. We were SO relieved. She videotaped nearly the whole scan.

So she asked us if we wanted to know the gender, and I asked her if she could just verify for us afterwards that one of them is a boy. I didn't want to know which baby (A or B), just that at least one of them was. So we averted our eyes whenever she needed to scan 'down there'. (Although Tim admitted later he did see Baby B!)

Then she had me get up and use the bathroom so they could measure my cervix with a vaginal ultrasound. (They do this for twin pregnancies to prevent "preterm labor" (PTL).) I said, "oh, so can you just confirm that at least one of them is a boy?" And she just stared at me like a deer caught in the headlights. Now, I was 90% sure I was having two boys. So I stared back at her, "What are you not saying?" And she gave this kind of helpless shrug. "Are you saying we are having TWO GIRLS?!" I asked, flabbergasted. And the tech said, "I don't know how to tell you that neither is a boy, when you don't want to know the gender!" I just had to laugh. I can NOT believe we are having two girls. When the doc came in, he confirmed it for us, too. There really is NOTHING between their legs, which were wide open!

So we are no longer Team Green (i.e. not finding out gender before birth) and I told Tim we may as well tell everyone since I had been so sure it was boys. (Not sure if you remember my story posted on the CarePages, but the week before I cycled, I had this other-worldly message that I was going to get pregnant, and I was going to have twin boys. I even saw the ultrasounds!) I had just really wanted to know what it was like to raise a baby boy, I am going to miss that. I did joke to Tim that we will just have to try again, and at least he said a half-hearted "yeah".

So count us Team Pink!

At least Thomas was a surprise....lol....

This is the rest of the info we learned during the anatomy scan (17w1d): Baby A is measuring ahead at 17w5d (a good thing), heartrate is 147bpm, weight 0.8 oz; Baby B measures 17w3d, 156bpm, and 0.7oz; my cervix measures great at 5cm (normal is 3cm, anything above 2.5 is good). So hopefully these little girls aren't going anywhere anytime soon!