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. 

12 Weeks Pregnant - High NT Measurement

 
Normally when you reach 12 weeks pregnant it brings a sense of relief, the miscarriage rate drops significantly and you will probably be thinking about how you announce you’re good news to friends and family.

I had made it to 12 weeks pregnant but my worries about miscarriage were as strong as they had been since that pregnancy test turned positive. We weren’t thinking that we could announce our news anytime soon, and we didn’t really know how this pregnancy was going to play out.

We didn’t even know if there would be a baby at the end of it.

Along with my anxiety about miscarriage, I was trying to be hopeful and excited. This baby is wanted, so wanted. 

We had the second Fetal Medicine Appointment on the Monday, which of course offered a huge relief. It cemented that I needed to continue being positive, because the NT fluid was now normal and we were now waiting the results of our Harmony Test (which should arrive in week 14).

The tiredness seems to have returned this week with a vengeance, I have been falling asleep on the sofa under a blanket (something I never do) and haven’t been able to make it to the end of the movie Luke and I were watching. Much to his annoyance. 

This week Leo brought a sickness bug home from school which he very kindly shared with me. I was sat at work on the Wednesday (Leo had been sick in the morning before school and was with my mum), and suddenly I felt nauseous. I thought it was in my head and carried on.... When I finished at 2pm I thought I was feeling ok. 

I went to get Leo and within 20 minutes of getting to my parents, I was there with my head down the toilet. Brilliant. I thought maybe that would be it, but I couldn’t keep anything down. 

I had been texting back and forward with Nicky (the lady who did my 10 week dating scan) and she was thrilled to hear our news. She asked if I had been given an official due date (which I thought was the date I was provided with last time), and told me that she would try and get me back in to get the official due date in my notes.

The next day Nicky text me and said that she had a spare appointment on Thursday 30th January. As it happened both Leo and I were off work and school due to the fact we had been poorly the day before (Leo was lots better now but couldn’t go back to school until the Friday). So it meant that Leo could come with me and Granny to finally see his little brother or sister on the screen.

The amazing thing was, Nicky was my midwife throughout my pregnancy with Leo, so it was a really lovely moment. Leo sat on a chair next to Granny while I lay on the bed, the gel was applied and the Doppler positioned, and boom... there was baby wiggling around and so much clearer than the images we saw at the fetal medicine unit. 

I wanted to turn to see Leo’s face but couldn’t contort my body while being scanned. Nicky said straight away that baby was looking good and although she wasn’t going to re-measure the fluid, she could see that it was within normal range.

Nicky measured the baby and at 12+4 was measuring 61.7mm - all of these scans have highlighted just how quickly a baby grows and develops. 

Leo was amazed and found the whole experience brilliant, I was so happy that he had got to come along, and as always he was so well behaved. He just looked and listened. 

My due date was adjusted to August 9th 2020, a day out from where I had been placed at my 10 week ultrasound. 

When the scan concluded Nicky gave me 2 new scans, 2 beautifully clear shots of our little nugget. You could see a real difference between these images and the ones from 10 weeks. The babies head was smaller and the body had got longer, and the fluid was now gone. 

Absolutely incredible.

I sat up on the bed and we started talking. Nicky told me that everything looks perfect right now and that I need to try and relax and enjoy my pregnancy now. All of these scans has really built an anxiety up for me and before each and every scan I worry that there won’t be a heartbeat anymore. 

Each and every time though, our baby has a beautifully strong heartbeat and is continuing to grow as expected. I think with the miscarriage and then the threat of a high NT, of course there is going to be anxiety at play. 

I am one of the lucky ones though, if I had my fist scan at 12 weeks, I would never have known that there was a high fluid reading at 10 weeks. Nicky said the same, but we acted on the information that was available and I will always be thankful to Nicky for everything she did.

You can see here the difference between the 10 week scan and the 12 week scan, and you cannot help but notice the pocket of fluid on the babies neck in the top image. At this last scan Nicky said that it was the first thing that she noticed, where as I was just worrying about whether there would be a heartbeat. I guess as Nicky said, we were both looking for very different things.

I am just so glad that everything is looking much more positive now.

Nicky said that she was really impressed with how I took the news about the Nuchal measurement, which actually really threw me. I didn’t start flapping, I don’t know if that’s because I didn’t fully understand the gravity of what I was being told at the time, or if it was because I like to arm myself with facts. I remember being the same in July when I was told that I had a missed miscarriage. Again I kept it together through the appointment, and later when I was away from everyone I let my feelings out.

Nicky threw her arms around me and asked me to let her know when I got my Harmony results back. It was really lovely as she is such a genuine person and I could tell she really cared. 

I found this scan appointment the most re-assuring of them all. Hearing Nicky tell me everything was fine carried so much more weight than it coming from anyone else. 

I had been worried that the other consultant may have missed the fluid and Nicky would find it again. Thankfully though everything was fine, everything was normal, everything was as it should be.

We are almost at the end of the first trimester now, and what a rollercoaster it has been. I’m hoping that the rest of my pregnancy will be simple and straightforward. The one positive thing about all of this is, I have seen our little Nugget grow from a mere little blob on the screen to a proper teeny tiny little baby.

I am 12 weeks pregnant and already had 5 scans so far...

I’m going into the second trimester back in midwife led care, I’m no longer high risk and the chances of a baby at the end of all this are looking sunnier and sunnier.

Now all we need are our Harmony (NIPT) test results back, and we will be well on our way.