13 Weeks Pregnant & Harmony Test Results (NIPT)

13 weeks pregnant. 

The second trimester.

This time seems to have gone as slowly as it has quickly.

I seem to spend my time waiting for the next baby appointment to roll around. This week is the first week in 3 weeks that I haven’t had some form of scan or assessment, and I am missing the reassuring words that followed last weeks scan.

I have been driving myself banana's this week, worrying that the baby’s heart will have stopped beating. This is and has been my top anxiety even before the high Nuchal Translucency (NT) reading.

 This was only heightened after that of course... Nothing quite jolts you like being told your at higher risk of miscarriage now.

With each scan though I have been reassured to hear and see our baby’s strong heart beating, pumping away helping our baby grow. But from our last scan until we get back from New York at the end of February, there will be no more scans and no more assessments.

Deep down I know baby is ok and I’m being a worry wart for nothing. I keep telling myself after the next scan ‘I’ll relax and enjoy my pregnancy’, but after the initial reassurance of each scan I have had, the potential doubt enters my mind and it’s hard to shake.

If anything the extra scans haven’t helped my anxiety, I’ve become almost reliant on them. It’s like at this stage in my pregnancy I need them to let me know that Nugget is doing ok, but any reassurance I gain from the scan is short lived, and a few days later the cycle begins again.

Obviously that is far from ideal, and a scan each and every week is not going to be happening.... but I think I will get in touch with my midwife and see if she can run the doppler over my stomach to hear baby’s heartbeat before we fly to New York.

Just for peace of mind of course.

It is Thursday today - 10 days since I had my blood taken for the Harmony (NIPT) test, I’ve stayed pretty relaxed about receiving the results. I felt like I knew they would come back low risk, and today I finally got a call from the hospital. 

The midwife introduced herself and sounded like she had good news to tell me, you can just tell by the tone of people’s voices. Straight away she said ‘It’s good news!’ And then proceeded to tell me that I had received a LOW RISK for the 3 Trisomies! That means that Down Syndrome, Edwards Syndrome and Patel Syndrome were less likely to be present in our baby!

The best news! I couldn’t stop grinning from ear to ear. I was at work when I took the call and the lady I work with shared in my happy news.

With the outcome I had hoped for under my belt, I text Luke, my family and Nicky (the lovely sonogropher who has been a god send to me these last few weeks) to let everyone know. 

After that, we announced my pregnancy to the director. So now I have informed work that I will be having a baby in August!

God it feels so good to actually say that.

It’s all starting to feel so much more real now, and tonight I pulled the doppler back out of the cupboard I had thrown it (I couldn’t find the heartbeat so hid it away to stop myself going mad), and I lay down on the bed to see if I could locate the boom, boom, boom of Nugget’s heart.

Below my belly button and just above my pubic bone, and slightly to the right.... there baby was. A beautiful strong and super fast swoosh, swoosh, swoosh. I lay there just listening and smiling feeling so so lucky.

I don’t take this pregnancy forgranted, everyday I’m feeling so lucky to be able to bring this life into the world. I’m feeling so excited now, and this outcome is better than I could have dared dream. 

I have started the process of booking my gender scan for Saturday 29th February. That is the next time I will see baby. I have decided that it would be nice to head back to Babyface4D where I had my early scan at 8 weeks. 

They are really competitively priced and even throw in the 3D prints all for £49, which is a complete steal. The other deal I was looking at an alternative company that would have cost £80, and would have been extra for 3D scan and images...

I’ve ordered a gender reveal balloon so that we can make it fun for Leo. It worked out cheaper to find the balloon on EBay... The plan is not to find out at the actual scan, but just to enjoy watching baby on the screen and then getting them to write down whether we are having a boy or a girl on a card. I will then take this card to the balloon shop and get them to inflate the balloon as per the instructions on the card.

Then when Luke finishes work we can all get together as a family (a big family that is, Grandparents, Aunts, Uncles and their partners!) and find out a little more about who the next member of this mad clan will be.

Week 13 has sharped into a really good week, we have more certainty over Nugget, and I think Luke is finally feeling relieved and able to get excited. The Harmony results are exactly what we hoped for, we have New York in just over a week, and we can finally tell the world that we are HAVING A BABY!

I’ll be happier once I can feel movement properly, there have been a few instances this week where I have wondered if it’s baby... but the jury is still out and I’m not sold. Hopefully in the next few weeks I will be able to feel them wiggling and jiggling.

I haven’t had any round ligament pain since the first fetal medicine appointment, I can’t really remember when it started with Leo. Or maybe you don’t feel it as much in subsequent pregnancies? 

I do feel like I’m starting to get a little teeny bump, I’m definitely not as flat as I was before falling pregnant (but then I’ve been eating what I want and not exercising... so it could just be that catching me up!)

On a final note for week 13, I have recieved my 20 week scan appointmnet now *insert woop woop* - It's the week after my echo cardiogram at Birmingham Fetal Medicine, and I will be 19+5 weeks pregnant.

Hopefully both of these scans will bring even more positive news, and following our gender scan in a few weeks, will take our scan toll to 9 already in this pregnancy (and that is even before I round it up to a neat 10 with a 3D scan at 26 weeks!).

For now though, all is well and we have come such a long way in the 4 weeks following our 10 week scan.