CVS Results: The Baby is a...

I haven't really posted much about this pregnancy at this point because, well, frankly, pregnancy at this stage is kind of boring. I'm closing in on 17 weeks so it's still too early to feel the baby move. For a few weeks now I've been at that awkward stage where you don't really look pregnant either. Instead, I just look like I indulged a little too much over the holidays.

What has been happening is a host of prenatal tests.

I know this isn't for everyone. There are lots of arguments for and against prenatal testing (or at least the kind we did). Like the point about it being invasive and having the potential for ending in miscarriage. Then there's the point of deciding what to do with the information once you have it. Like I said, it's not for everyone...and discussing it publicly feels a bit like picking up a loaded gun.

Nevertheless, Tim and I had some deep conversations whenever we moved in together (9 years ago) about kids and how we thought me might try to raise them if we ever had any. We also had some conversations about how much we thought we could handle should something go horribly wrong. At my reproductive age the possibility of something going wrong is very real so this was more than a way "out there" what-if kind of a conversation. The other half of the equation is that we're nerds. Like, super dorks. With backgrounds in molecular biology and medicine our hunger for definitive information has only gotten stronger and our fear of the unknown more gripping.

We went straight for CVS (chorionic villus sampling). We didn't stop there either - we went for the full microarray analysis, which tests for about a thousand other known genetic problems. We did the same with Ada and would do so again for any future babies.

I'm so happy and relieved to report that all is well in baby land. He has just the right number of chromosomes and, in case you didn't catch that, he's a BOY!