20 week anatomy scan and cyst...

Yesterday was my 20 week anatomy scan to make sure all of Norah Caroline's internal organs are developing correctly.

She's still a girl, thank goodness. She was very active again and spent most of the time kicking the ultrasound wand wherever it was on my belly (future Mia Hamm, maybe?) it was very odd to see her kick on the screen and feel it at the same time. Her activity made it difficult at times for the tech to take measurements. She got all of the measurements she needed and Norah is measuring right on target for her age. She was also swallowing, and we could see her little tongue moving up and down in her mouth. We got to see the four chambers of her heart, kidneys, bladder, spine and brain.

When they were measuing the brain, the tech found a dark spot on the right hemisphere in the portion that produces the cerebral fluid. This is a coroid plexus cyst (CPC) and she explained that they see these from time to time in babies. More than likely, it is nothing and Dr. Biggs may not even say anything about it since they are usually not a big deal. Regardless, we were a little apprehensive about it and were anxious to talk to the dr.

When Dr. Biggs came in, she said that everything looked fine and all of Norah's organs looked normal. She mentioned the CPC and said that it can be a marker for Trisomy 18 (Edwards Syndrome, which is a fatal genetic disease). She pointed out that there were no other markers (nasal bone was present, heart was well-formed, femur was developing fine, I had no increased risk based on the NT and quad screening and I'm young with no family history of genetic disorders) and CPCs rarely occur in Trisomy babies without the presence of additional markers. Most of the time, they resolve on thier own by 24-26 weeks and many doctors never even mention them to low-risk patients, but she wanted us to know and felt like she owed it to us to tell us. She offered to refer me to a perinatologist for a level II ultrasound (which is more detailed than in the OBs office) if I wanted to make sure.

So, we go see the new doctor next Friday just to be on the safe side. After further research, I found that the CPC (feel free to google it..most of the info is that they are usually innocuous) is VERY weakly associated with Trisomy 18. Most of the studies done on the correlation are in high-risk pregnancies, so the published results may be artificially high. Also, "isolated CPCs" (CPCs that occur in fetuses with no other markers) do not interfere with brain function and have not been found to cause any developmental delays in children who have had them in utero. Some adults even have CPCs develop and never know it.

I told Dr. Biggs that if she wasn't worried, I won't be worried, and she said she's not. So I'm just focusing on getting to see Norah again next week. Hopefully, I'll get some good pictures from it.

I didn't get a chance to scan the pictures from yesterday; I'll try to do them tonight. I know I also owe you a belly picture, so I'll get that tonight, too.

Love you all and please pray for us ;0)