Maternity leave

I rang our HR department today to find out the details of the University's maternity leave program. I'm very lucky to be working for an employer who provides up to 6 months of paid maternity leave (I can take up to 12 months leave in total but no more than 26 weeks can be paid at full-time salary). With a bit of fussing around, I think we'll manage to have one or the other of us at home from April to December next year. That will be nice :-)

I can't begin to imagine what it would be like to not have the capacity to take paid leave. I really feel for those people wanting to start a family but who don't have the same leave entitlements that we get. It must be really hard. But it's also weird for me to even be thinking about this!! I can't actually believe I'm having this conversation with HR because it is not a conversation I really thought I'd ever have. But I guess that proves you never know what's around the corner.

Imagine my surprise when my obstretrician's receptionist asked me the other day if I had pre-booked at the hospital yet! It turns out you need to complete an online preadmission form NOW for a maternity admission in APRIL. Good grief! We haven't even begun to think that far ahead (other than my cursory enquiries with HR as mentioned above). At the moment we're busy designing a new kitchen and getting quotes for that. So there's no time to think about baby things yet - that will come in January after the new kitchen!

Some results...

Well, on Monday we met with the obstetrician to get the results of our nuchal scan. The ratio you are given is a representation of your age, your blood tests and family medical history, and your nuchal fold measurement. In my case, the ratio was 1:379, which places me in the 'low risk' group. Yay!!! Dr P still offered me an amnio though - he said he offers that to everyone whose fold measured over 2mm but ironically the odds for having a miscarriage after amnio are 1:300 which is worse than my odds for Down's Syndrome! We discussed the pros and cons with Dr P., and that given that the nuchal measurement of 2.38mm was the largest taken on the day (therefore the others would have been lower), and given that we really want to just sit back now and enjoy our pregnancy for a while, Brandon and I decided not to go ahead with the amnio. Dr P said this was fine - he didn't think there would be a problem, but he just wanted to know I had the option if I wanted it.

So I'm relieved!! AND I have started telling people. More and more people will now probably start reading this blog (leave me a message peoples!!) I'm 14 weeks pregnant as of tomorrow so I figure it's probably safe to start telling people. I told my Head of School on Monday and a few other people at work and Brandon has also started telling some work colleagues and fishing buddies. It's starting to feel a little more real now!

Mum has bought the first knitting pattern for the sprout!!! 6 more weeks and we'll know what colour yarn to use...

Nuchal translucency scan

Thirteen weeks today! Today I had an important scan, called a nuchal translucency. This is one of the tests they run to determine if your foetus is likely to have any chromosomal abnormalities. They do a specific measurement of the amount of fluid behind the neck in the 'nuchal fold', with bigger measurements suggesting poorer outcomes. This measurement is also considered with blood tests and you end up given a risk ratio. I won't be getting my risk ratio until I meet with my obstetrician on Monday but my nuchal fold measurement was 2.38mm which is within the normal range. But obviously the blood tests will complete the picture.

As part of the nuchal translucency I had a lengthier scan and walked away with a lot of images on a CD! It was pretty exciting to see the head, legs, arms, feet and hands even in something so small (7cm). I was also fortunate to have Mum and Dad in town at the moment so they came with us and were able to see little Sprout moving around and shaking his or her fists at the sonographer for waking him/her up!

I've attached some photos here - on the black and white one you can clearly make out the shape of a side-on picture of the foetus, with the head on the right of the screen.

This 'orange' photo is looking front on to the foetus in a sort of 3-dimensional image. Quite weird!!! The foetus has his/her hand up next to his/her head.

 I will write another post on Monday once I've heard what is hopefully some good news from the obstetrician.