Week 21 Doctor Appointment

Evan and I have a really wonderful doctor that we've been seeing every month.  He is very calm and level headed, and I don't think he over-shares unnecessary medical information with us.  I've heard horror stories from my friends whose doctors say things like "I hate to tell you this, but there is a 1% chance that your baby has Down Syndrome."  Well, yes I see that the doctors have to be transparent and share the information they have about your pregnancy, but would it be possible to say something like "Congratulations, there is a 99% chance that your baby does not have Down Syndrome!"  The truth is that you can't do anything about it anyway - I suppose in some cases there is the option to abort a pregnancy, but that is not something we are interested in, so in some ways it feels like the less information we get the better.  We had a conversation in our last appointment with the doctor about how technology during pregnancy is not always the most beneficial.  Often times doctors will see something that is perfectly normal progression for a growing fetus, but it will be seen as a red flag and told to the parent resulting in fear and panic over something which is ultimately not an issue; or not something that can be changed - ie. Down Syndrome.  Either the baby has it or they don't, the parents only option is to keep the baby or not, and it pains me to say that is even an option.

I'll get off my soapbox now, I just feel very appreciative that we have a doctor who we get along with so well.  His response to our last ultrasound was "I saw your ultrasound and it looked good."  I said "Oh, everything was normal?"  He said "Yeah, looking great."  Perfect, that's all I needed to hear.  He took time to answer the few questions I had, one of which was "When I sit down and or lean forward, I really feel the bottom baby kick and move a lot, am I squishing them?"  Don't laugh, if you thought you were possibly and accidentally squishing your baby, you'd double check too.  He quickly said no, the babies are safe in there, you're not hurting them.

Dr. Lovett also told Evan and I about a study he was part of where they tested whether or not it was necessary to do a c-section on mothers of twins when the second baby was breach.  He said in the study, whether or not the c-section was done, the babies and mom had relatively similar healthy recoveries.  To get the second breach baby out vaginally, apparently the doctor just grabs the baby by it's feet and pulls it out...now that doesn't seem very nurturing to me, he says it's safe as long as the doctor doesn't panic.  Yes those were his exact words, "AS LONG AS YOUR DOCTOR DOESN'T PANIC."  I mean hell, if the doctor panics, just show me where the babies legs are and I'll pull it out.  Problem solved.

Aside from that nugget of information about delivery, Dr. Lovett said we'd discuss the delivery in a couple of months.  If I do not go into labor by 2 weeks before the due date of August 16th he said he'll schedule me to be induced, so regardless of my due date, babies are on their way in early August at the latest.  4 months from now... Evan and I have a lot of planning to do still.  The Doctor finished off our appointment with a lovely 10 or so minute chat with Evan about opening day for the Giants.  Perhaps they should go to a game together, I'm sure our Doctor has box seats.

Next weekend is our baby shower in San Diego!  We are incredibly excited, more than anything to learn the gender of our little ones.  I have a feeling there's at least one boy in there - I could be wrong.  I'm dying to find out.  

I don't have a week 21 photo yet, I'll get that out soon.  For now I will leave you with a picture of the other little family we've started:  These are the plants we bought because Evan said our apartment needed more "life" in it.  So far we haven't killed any of them, so that's good.  My cats think the tall one in back is a cat toy, so they nibble on the tips of it.  I'm with them, if I were a cat I'd play with it too.

Also, for those of you who have heard some lie about my cats not being friendly, I'd like to share this photo with you of how much little Jinx loves Evan.

Happy Friday,
Love Bree and Evan