Vanity

My appointment with Dr. L today was a much longer appointment than it should have been, and the vast majority of it was good. Baby D was moving around like crazy, as usual. The amniotic fluid level was up a bit from last week but it wasn’t a significant increase. His heart rate was fine (145). One of the last things she checks for is whether he is practicing his breathing. Unfortunately, he was not cooperative with this today and we had to wait 20 minutes for him to do this. And he didn’t do it for a straight 30 seconds, which is what they’re looking for. But the reason for that measurement is to make sure baby isn’t in distress, and given his highly active state during the rest of the ultrasound, there wasn’t a concern about that. But if he hadn’t done some breathing practice, I would have to be connected to a monitor to check his heart rate for accelerations during movement, etc. Given that this will need to be done every week for the next 8 weeks, I really hope he cooperates or these appointments will take up a ton of time.

Dr. L took some more cute pictures today. As I was leaving, she mentioned how cute he is. She also noted that his slightly flat forehead seemed to be the only physical feature that sort of showed Down syndrome. I think in some way she was trying to be nice and relieve any concerns I might have about how he might look. Honestly, it just made me cry the whole way home. This just shows off my vanity, I guess. I don’t want him to have Down syndrome features. I don’t want him to look “different.”

Maybe I’ve just been spoiled. Nathan is awfully cute and always has been. And I’m sure that this baby will be cute too. And I know that when we actually get to meet him, we’ll always see him as our beautiful son. And even if he didn’t have Down syndrome, there’s no reason to believe this little guy would be another “Mini Mark.” Anyway, that’s my struggle of the day.