Quad Screen

The last few weeks have been kind of a whirlwind for us. Because of my age, our midwife suggested we do some noninvasive prenatal testing, which they can do now by drawing a few vials of blood. One of the tests is called a “quad screen,” which gives a ratio analysis of your likelihood of having a baby with Down syndrome, spina bifida, and a few other things. Our test came back positive for Down, which meant that our baby doesn’t necessarily have it, but that I have a higher than average likelihood – instead of 1/300 for my age, it was 1/76. We did some follow up testing that took two weeks to return, and found out yesterday that the baby is healthy – we are relieved and thankful.

Some of the highlights from the last month:

I asked Aaron what we should put for this section, and he said “Your husband thinks you are getting more beautiful every day.” 🙂 He’s pretty much the best.

Our baby chicks out at the farm are getting bigger each day – we are hoping to integrate them in with the two big chickens, Lady and Tweet Tweet, but Lady is pretty hostile to them still, so we’ll see when that happens!

Fall has been beautiful this season – so many orange, yellow, and red trees. Last Sabbath, we spent a few hours just driving around back roads.

I had a fun girls weekend in Portland with friends from Milo – we talked, had dinner, and made clay ornaments. The picture for this post is of a sample one from Pinterest, since I’ll be giving out some of the ones I made for Christmas!

We spent Thanksgiving in White Salmon with Aaron’s family and had fun playing a new game called Hugger Mugger. On Sunday, on the way back, we stopped in Portland to see my parents as my mom was dropping my dad off at the airport to go to Malawi for a month. My mom brought us some yummy persimmon cookies she’d just made.

And our best news, of course, is that our baby is healthy. At our last ultrasound, she was moving all around and wiggling her little arms and legs. They measured her height and weight and said she is “long and lean” (how did that happen?!) with a weight in the 54th percentile and a height in the 78th.

Some of the lowlights from the last month:

Everyone says you’ll get lots of advice when pregnant or parenting – so I knew that was coming, but it’s been hard. Just in the last week, I’ve had people say “I don’t know why any woman would have pain control measures during childbirth” to me, and “You know that there’s tons of research showing that an epidural hurts both you and the baby, and that you won’t attach as well if you do that.” I’ve been so inspired by a book I’m reading, called “nurture” by Erica Chidi Cohen. She’s a doula in Southern California, and I don’t know how to describe her writing except to say it feels like a big, warm hug of kindness. She says things like, “When you’re pregnant for the first time, you may feel vulnerable, and so many people will give you advice. Sometimes that advice isn’t right for you. So, trust to your intuition,” and “We need to stop using the term “natural birth.” The concept of natural birth is divisive and inherently competitive. All birth is natural. It’s as simple as that. If you want to have the intense sensations of labor and you’re coping well, go for it! If you have a hard time with pain or you have bad associations from trauma, that’s totally okay. You have the inherent right to choose how you want to navigate your birth experience, and those choices should be free of judgment.”  Comforting, right?

Hope all of you are finding moments of peace and joy during the busy-ness of the season.