all is well.

we had our long (almost 3 hour long) first ob appointment today. it was great seeing liz the p.a. again (she's the first person we met with when we were pregnant with anthony - ahhh, seems like forever ago). we went over our history and any changes that have occured over the past 3.5 years since having tony (my mom's stent placement in her heart, my dad's prostate cancer, and of course, more recently my sister's abruption with oliver...wow, we had a lot happen).

a lot of things have changed in regards to testing since we had tony. we went without the "triple screen" testing with tony...something they don't do any longer. since then they went to a "quad screen" and now an "nt scan". we opted to do the nt scan as it has a much better accuracy rate than the other tests did with not as a great a false positive rate. we will have this special ultrasound and blood-draws done at 12 weeks (6/5) so a little less than a month away. we aren't too concerned that we'll have any markers for downs syndrome, trisomy 18, spina bifida and such as we don't have family histories of these problems, but it will be nice to rule it out, and, god forbid, if we found out there was a problem, we'd know how to better plan for it.

no ultrasound today (as i was just in tuesday) but that was fine. after hearing the strong heartbeat on tuesday and seeing the baby, i was ok with that. liz did say i could come in as often as i want given the freshness of what occured with my sister. i took her up on the offer and i will go in 2 weeks from today on 5/22 for a heart rate check on the doppler, and if they can't find it as it still could be early on the doppler, i will automatically get an ultrasound...comforting. then it will be back in 2 weeks for the nt scan. we are going to take it one office visit at a time in regards to how often i am there. i think after the next two visits i will try to just be a "normal" pregnant woman, but we'll see how much my nerves change towards the end and approaching the time when my sister had her problems...they might just see me every day...which she assured me was fine. god i love my dr's office!

i do have to do a 24-hour urine collection. i had to do these weekly with anthony during my last 2 months of pregnancy as my blood pressure was borderline pre-eclampsia. they wanted to do a baseline test to determine where my blood pressure is now, so they have something to compare it to should it rise later on. they didn't have this to go by the last time. bood pressure check today was fine, but they just want to check the proteins to make sure they aren't starting to elevate.

we met with dr. dougherty again today...his first day at the practice was the day i was induced with anthony. he was with us all day tuesday and into wednesday only for an hour before i delivered tony, his shift ended and he ended up not delivering him. it is a constant joke that we "worked him hard" that day with no reward. he said that i should go much quicker and on my own this time around...i asked him to put that in writing...he wouldn't...so i'm taking it for what it's worth, but you better bet i am going to try to hold him to it!

ok, now i think i'm done. this post got rather long, and if you're still with me...thanks for waiting out my rambling!

i'm hoping for a pretty quiet and uneventful few weeks until my next appointment. have a great weekend everyone!