In the second trimester!

Words I can't imagine saying, actually. I did go for today's ultrasound, and I spent like 5 minutes shaking after I saw that everything still looked fine. Then came the bit where I spontaneously burst into tears.I eventually calmed down, but still sounded like I was on speed every time I opened my mouth to ask the doctor a question, which was, as you would imagine, a lot of times.

As of now, everything is fine. The baby measured fine, and the heart rate with 158, which was a good number. The nuchal translucency was an extremely reassuring 1.2 mm, with no heart-linked issues spotted at this point. I really like this fetal medicine specialist (she is definitely going to be getting an awesome review from me; I'm a big believer in acknowledging medical excellence). She was very kind, calm (great bedside manner) and very well read...It is super nice when I start sprouting stats that people actually connect the dots in a logical manner because they have seen those studies too and have evaluated them objectively.

We drew blood for the dual markers, and I should have those results in 4 days.

I rhetorically asked: there is no non-invasive fetal DNA testing in India yet, right? You could have knocked me down with a feather when she said that there is.

There are 2 options: BGI, a Chinese company that uses the same technology as Sequenom (massively parallel sequencing). They are already operational, but their website was not too informative, and the one study they had published  was on very small sample subsets. Update: more digging has revealed that thier test (NIFTY/iGeneScreen) has been fairly well validated. I'm confused as to whether it also tests for Turners/klienfelters syndromes. If it does, I need look no further.

Natera (they test Turners and the 3 trisomies) uses an SNP-based analysis, and their Panorama test has been extensively scrutinized, but is not YET available in India..it may be here soon.

Both would just collect blood here and ship back to the home labs, which is fine by me. I prefer Natera, will wait and watch for a bit.

But as of now, all is okay(!!). Lets hope that the blood tests bring good news in 4 days.

I have a baby with arms and legs and hands and feet and a beautifully delineated spine, and a heart with chambers. I cant believe that is actually happening.