A week ago today I went into a perinatal clinic to have a Nuchal translucency (NT) scan done. Figured it was a good idea, what with me being of “advanced maternal age” and all. When I went in for Little Prince’s I had it done at the birthing center, but the birthing center is between ultrasound techs right now, so I had to go somewhere else.

The tech was very good and very nice. She put the images up on a big screen so I could see Bae moving around. Unlike LP, who wouldn’t cooperate for the scan, Bae behaved very nicely and the tech was able to see everything she needed to see. I got to see the brain (both sides are developing well), little hands and feet, and the face. The tech said that the neck measured well within normal range and the nose bones look good.

After the scan was over, I waited for what seemed like forever in a very cold exam room to talk to the doctor. He said that with a good scan, like this one, I think the chances of Down Syndrome are down to 1 in 3,000 or 30,000 or something like that. Anyway, super super low. Then he talked to me about all the other testing options we could do. It’s amazing how much has changed in four years. They have these blood tests now that can scan for the fetus’s DNA in the mother’s blood and detect chromosome abnormalities and can even predict the sex. But they run between $20 and $200. Since I have a HDHP, I bet mine would be on the higher scale. And since the only reason I’d want one would be to find out Bae’s sex early, I figured it wasn’t worth spending the money.

So hopefully everything is fine. At this point I have no reason to believe it would not be. And we’ll wait until the 20 week-ish anatomy scan, just like we did with LP.