Exhale

Thank you all so much for your good wishes and encouragements and sympathies. (May, get your heart our of your mouth, darling, you're liable to chew it or something.)

The short answer is that everything is fine.

ETA: pics to come; I think Sugar took them back to work in her bag.

The bean was very reluctant to get into the necessary position, so we had a nice long spying session while the sonographer punched, jiggled, and generally assaulted my bladder. (I like her anyway.) Heart was visible even to me, amid the sea of static. It was beating away at 155 bpm, she said. Lots of wiggling and so forth.

Measurements are all good and put risk of Downs and Trisomy 18/13 at comfortably remote levels. HCG was also good. PAPP-A, less so. Dr. Southern said that was still fine vis-a-vis Downs and Trisomy 18/13, but did have a slight correlation with increased risk of Pre-eclampsia, IUGR, and Pre-term Labor. Yuck.

The math part, in case you're into that kind of kink:

My measurement for PAPP-A was 5th percentile -- still well below what they like (30th) for its principal use as a indicator of risk for DS and Tri 18/13, but not an issue in my case because all the other data was so good.

The study that found the correlations listed above found them at and below the 1st percentile. It wasn't, apparently, an amazingly significant correlation for all aspects. Risk of pre-e was about double the general population risk for the patient's demographic group, which is still a pretty low risk. (For instance, Dr. Southern said that if I had been 1st percentile, my risk would have gone from about 2.5% to 5%.) IUGR is associated with pre-e (because of blood-flow problems in the placenta), so it's not surprising that it made the list, too.

I'm not at the 1st percentile, though. I'm at the 5th. Which means the correlations in my case are less convincing.

/math

Dr. Southern said he would recommend keeping a closer than usual eye on me for IUGR and pre-term labor, but he didn't seem too worried. As it happens, that's already in the cards. Both are common complications for those of us with bionic anatomies, that is, Müllerian Anomalies. Dr. Baby Factory thought I wasn't at increased risk for incompetent cervix because, unlike most bionics, I have a uterus of normal size and shape. But then Dr. Robot mentioned, in our discussion (ok, her lecture and my attempts to squeeze in a question without being interrupted) of c-sections, that she wouldn't attempt a version on me in the case of a breech presentation, because even if my ute looks normal, it will be different on a microscopic level from a typical ute, and won't stretch as well. The wheels in my head finally got through processing that tidbit this week, so I called to find out whether that also put me back in the incompetent cervix crowd, and it turns out it does. So it looks like I shan't be lonesome for medical attention after all.

Speaking of Dr. Robot, who has the bedside manner of Henry Ford: Dr. Southern asked if I'd seen her and said she'd called recently to ask his opinion on a patient he was pretty sure was me. (They aren't in the same practice; my OB clinic sends all patients to this practice for NT.) Warms the cockles of me heart, that does. I guess she's not so bad. She needs some lessons on talking to people, but she both knows her stuff and isn't too arrogant to seek help with tricky bits. That's not such a bad kind of doctor, really.