baby boy

on friday scott & i went to our 24 week ultrasound (even though i was 23 weeks 5 days). it was in santa rosa, and it was a normal fetal ultrasound. that was weird for us. it wasn't an hour long... we didn't need to meet with doctors afterwards... it was just the tech, it took about 10 minutes, and then we were done. crazy. it's strange how much has changed in the last few weeks since the gastroschisis diagnosis. it's weird how a normal ultrasound is weird for me. it's weird that i have a high risk pregnancy. it's weird that instead of talking to other moms about the nursery or fussing over small stuff i spend my days talking to other moms about how long their babies were in the hospital, when they got to hold them for the first time, when the baby pooped for the first time, how many surgeries he/she had to have. today we talked about whether or not to have pacifiers in the NICU for the baby (it helps gastroschisis babies immensely to further develop their suckling when they are finally able to be bottle fed), and if i'll be able to breast feed. i want to breast feed, and there's a good possibility i won't be able to because we need to regulate how much food the baby is taking in at each feeding. we might even have to supplement the breast milk i pump with formula to make sure the baby is getting enough calories to gain weight.

it's just that this whole pregnancy isn't "normal", so to have a normal ultrasound appointment was so weird. i felt like something was wrong. like they weren't doing their job well enough. i can't explain it, really. my dad came to the appointment, and that was really nice. i think it brought him some comfort that he needed. the ultrasound tech said something about how it looks like there's not very much bowel on the outside. my dad got excited about that. but i know what we're facing, and i know that i can't listen to the tech's diagnosis of the baby's gastroschisis. i am 100% aware that you cannot tell the state of the bowels (except for bowel death, distention, and if the bowel has looped at all) before birth. so as nice as it was for her to say that, and i'm sure it was nice for my dad to hear it, i can't buy into that. because we just don't know what we're dealing with yet.