The baby's ultrasound was on Friday and everything checked out. His body is growing right on schedule. He's about 15 ounces now and should crack that 1 pound mark by the end of this week. Typically the due date is not changed after the first ultrasound, but the doctor will sometimes recommend a tweak based on the baby's growth rate. For our little guy, he's right on target, so the April 14th due date is still intact. Also, with some saying there is a 3% error rate on determining the baby's gender on ultrasounds, we double checked and sure enough, he is still a he. That puts us at about 1 in 10,000 that they are wrong on that, so I didn't waste my time painting his room blue. Bones are all looking great and the ultrasound showed a very close up, incredibly accurate view of his heart. This time, with the structure about double the size, all four chambers were clearly distinguishable, pumping away at 155 beats per minute. Brain growth is right on track, hip bones look solid, and he was pretty active in there.
The bad news is that the burn of the DVD does not seem to have worked properly, so I won't be able to convert this into a viewable video for those of you that were asking for it. Sorry about that. I'm going to see what I can do, but in my computer, it just locks everything up. I'm not real sure what she did.
Other news out there is that Antoinette is changing doctors. The one we were with was good, but her office kept screwing up the appointments. If we had to reschedule one, they would change it, then leave the old one on the schedule, call us for both to confirm we were coming in, give us flak about cancelling too late even though we cancelled weeks ago, etc. Just constant mistakes in their front office that were confusing us, the ultrasound labs, the midwife, and the doctor herself. On top of that, we found out about some fairly ridiculous charges for nonsense that most doctors we talked to did not charge. Little things, but enough to annoy you. Like charging you $1 per page to print or fax your medical records or charging $35 to put their signature on your FMLA paperwork. Up front fees for this and that which the other doctors were not charging made us leery. So, its early enough to make a switch.
That being said, we are going to take a tour of the new hospital this upcoming Saturday or the following Wednesday and if all checks out, we'll make it official. Antoinette meets her new doctor, who comes highly recommended from the girls at her office and even at the ultrasound clinic on Friday, for the first time on Wednesday.
Some extra updates on the little guy include a doubling in weight over the next four weeks (2 pounds by mid-January). Also, his inner ear bones are seeing some advanced development which means that he can become extra mobile in a loud noise environment, such as around vacuum cleaners, loud TV's, etc.
Also, this is critical development time for the little guy when it comes to premature survivability. For a baby born at 23 weeks, the survival rate is anywhere from 10-70% dependent on a huge host of factors. Those that are born this early can have some long term disabilities. For every week from here on out, the baby will gain another 3-5% in the survivability department until the completion of Week 27 (because its a baby boy and they mature more slowly than females...throughout life), when the baby's premature survivability rates leap forward to 80-90%. Every extra week of cooking in Momma's "oven" adds a large amount of extra development to aid this factor and present us with a more complete and ready for the outside world baby boy.
Anyway, so far, so good. Tomorrow, we'll wrap up Week 23 with a new belly picture from Antoinette and maybe some updates on how she's doing and how she's feeling. We even bought the little guy his first little Christmas stocking, so maybe we'll get Antoinette to pose with it!!!
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