27 Week Follow-up Ultrasound

Today I went in for a follow up ultrasound.  At my 20 week ultrasound they saw what they called "echogenic bowel"  That's when the baby's bowels look brighter than they are suppose to.  It's a soft marker for a million different things, including Down Syndrome or Cystic Fibrosis.  Today they wanted to see if the baby's bowels were still bright and they wanted to look at the baby's kidneys, but first let's look at this ADORABLE face...

The ultrasound technician first took the baby's measurements to make sure he was thriving.  According to this head and belly I'm measuring a week ahead.  His femur was measuring right on track and overall he was looking great.  She took lots of different views of his bowels and kidneys to give the radiologist a lot of different views.  She told me that his bowels still looked a little bright but not nearly as bright as they did on my last ultrasound.

She kept saying "I'm not impressed, not like I was with your first ultrasound."  She kept reassuring me that I was going to be JUST fine.  Because his bowels were still showing brighter than usual and I was paranoid about Down's or Cystic Fibrosis, she took at a look at other soft markers to try and help reassure me.  Usually Down's babies have short femurs, heart abnormalities, abnormal hand folds, a fat pad at the base of the neck and an under developed nasal bone.  My baby had none of these things and so the technician was very confident that he doesn't have Down Syndrome. The technician also didn't see any signs of thick mucus which is common with cystic fibrosis.

So what does all this mean?  I asked the technician... "So what do you think?  Should I still be concerned?"  She told me that she definitely would have said I had echogenic bowel for my 20 week ultrasound but she wouldn't be so confident saying that this time, just because they weren't bright enough to raise any concern in her mind and after looking at all the other markers she wouldn't be worried, but that she isn't sure what my doctor is going to think and worse case scenario is that I get another ultrasound in a few weeks.  However, once I enter the 3rd trimester, baby will start producing meconium and meconium shows up bright on the ultrasound.  So bottom line, we still don't know if there is anything to be concerned about.  We are just chillin' in no man's land.

Next, the technician looked at little man's kidney's.  She said everything seemed to functioning correctly and the baby was producing urine like he should.  However, his left kidney looked like it had two ureters coming out of it instead of one. The technician tried to look at a few different angles but my little guy did NOT want to cooperate at all.  He kept turning and moving around.  The technician said that because everything looked like it was functioning correctly, I shouldn't be concerned.  She told me worse case scenario is that the baby will have to have an ultrasound right after he's born to confirmed that he is voiding correctly and having two ureters does happen and doesn't mean anything is wrong.

So again...we are just in the waiting game.  Bottom line, baby looks healthy and is growing great.  I'm still worried. I just want my baby to be healthy but I'm going to try and not get stressed out and just wait and see what my doctor says.

After all the diagnosis was done, we spend some time looking at my cute baby boy in 3D.  Can I just say, I don't know what it is about ultrasound technicians, but they are obsessed with little boys' units. They LOVE to look at them.  The technician even got a little creative this time and I was DYING!
Meet baby's snail...

She's all "Look!  a little snail is crawling up his leg..." We kept trying to get a good picture of baby's face but he was just cuddling up to my placenta, perfectly content...it was adorable and I'll take any picture of my baby's face, even if it's just half of his face.

The baby's hand or foot was always right in front of his face so we didn't get any great shots but I still just ate them up.  At one point, he was sucking on his big toe.  It was adorable!

baby is VERY flexible! The technician called this shot the "Go Yoga" move.

This is a picture of him playing with his foot and blowing bubbles.  This is a top view.  His head is on the left and he's holding his food with both hands...adorable right?

Bottom line? No matter what, IF anything is wrong with my little boy I already love him to pieces and NOTHING is going to change that.  Cross your fingers and say a prayer that all will be okay and let's hope this mama's little heart can take the worry for 3 more months.