Ultra

Yesterday, Eli and I went in for the first trimester screening and the Ashkenazi panel. The 12 week ultrasound was cool, the giving blood less so, but at least I didn't leave looking like a bruised heroin addict, like so many times before. (Are opera queens heroine addicts?)

The 7 week ultrasound was neat because I actually could see that there was a kidney bean shaped creature with a disproportional white pulsing thing causing my queasiness, and I wasn't just suffering an hysterical pregnancy. At 12 weeks the embryo is now a full fledged fetus, more aesthetically proportioned and floating around. Active little bugger. At one point, it looked like we even got a wave.

The nasal bone is forming properly -- no surprise, really, looking at its parents' shnozes. (I can just picture the genetic map arriving at central headquarters, "Damn, we better get working on this nose-thing fast or there won't be time for it to reach its ultimate size." Poor baby, I just hope it doesn't get my beak and its daddy's width. Yikes. Don't worry, I will love it anyway and spend extra time working on trigonometry for toddlers.) The spinal fluid in the neck is WAY below any risk level -- already overachieving, my kid.

I'm not really worried about the results of the Ashkenazi panel. We figured better safe than sorry, especially since Eli has a much higher likelihood of being a carrier (his sister screened borderline for Tay-Sachs). Mixing up the gene pool is a good thing. Even my dad, who is fully Ashkenazi, has parents who hail from different parts of Europe, so he's mutted up, too. I think instead of encouraging their children to marry Jews, Jewish parents should encourage their children to marry converts since, in the long run, it will be much to our genetic advantage.