Oh My God!!!

The CVS experience was perhaps the most unpleasant thing I've been through in my life (drink a quart and a half of water and then wait an hour before having two people push and pull and prod all over your abdomen and you'll have a little idea of what I went through), BUT I got to see my amazing baby kicking and waving and being so human!


As the ultrasound technician pushed on my abdomen and got some pictures for the perinatologist so she could decide whether my bladder was full enough, Baby Matousek was moving and kicking and swinging his/her arms. "Busy baby," she said. "Look at that." It was the most amazing thing to see this little human kicking and kicking and kicking. I could even see the little toes. I had those incredible images to hold on to when the technician came back five minutes later and told me I had to drink yet another glass of water.


Baby measures a little over 2 inches (which sizes the baby at about 11 weeks 5 days) and has a healthy heart rate of 175. I could have watched that little rapid heart beating right in the chest cavity for hours. So cool.

CVS stands for chorionic villus sampling, and it is a procedure in which a small sample of tissue is taken from the placenta. Because the placenta and the baby have the same DNA makeup, testing of the villi that project off the placenta allows chromosomal mapping of the baby. This test can detect any chromosomal abnormalities that can occur with a woman of "advanced maternal age." (Yah, I love that phrase.) A catheter is fed in and they usually take two villi samples, but because I had quite a bit of bleeding with the first pass, Dr. Pratt stopped after just one sample. She said they'd call and let me know if there was enough tissue in the sample to allow the testing. If not, I'd have to go back for an amnio at 14 weeks.

After the test the ultrasound technician looked at the baby again and checked his/her heartrate to make sure everything was okay. Baby was really dancing around and doing flips and somersaults. So funny to see. "Look at that baby go," she said. My little gymnast.

I was a little anxious about whether or not they got enough tissue, but the lab just called. They have enough tissue and they will call me with results (after the culture and analysis in the lab) in 7-10 days.

I'm really glad to have that procedure behind me, but it was incredible to see a living, moving little human flip-flopping around inside me.