She has hair! (and other updates)

Today once again Lydia was seen with a level II ultrasound (rather than just a plain old level 1 ultrasound). And this time, not only did Mom get to see more of her cute little face (making faces at that, with her cute nose, chubby cheeks, and squinchy eyes), but Mom also got to see that Lydia has hair! We're 5 for 5 now for non-bald babies.

The ultrasound fest started with the big ultrasound way back when that revealed that Lydia had just one artery in her umbilical cord instead of the usual two, a problem that is sometimes associated with too small babies. Several ultrasounds later and a couple of glucose tests later, Mom has now been diagnosed with gestational diabetes (that's a new one for us), a condition which may cause overly large babies. Oh the irony . . . here's hoping that the two conditions can neutralize each other . . . with a little help from the medical community.

That said, the official diagnoses from today's ultrasound is that "diabetes is winning" or in other words that she is by no means small. The last level 1 ultrasound I had (way back on Friday, the 18th) placed her at about 4 pounds and in the 71st percentile. The ultrasound today placed her at about 5 pounds and in the 94th percentile. Sooo . . . either she gained a pound in three days or someone's equipment/technique is a little off. Either way, the end point is that she is not too small.

However, the good news is that her bigness seems to be that of a normally big baby (regular proportions, just big) rather than those of a diabetes-big baby (disproportionately big body relative to the head). This appears to be a time when our typical familial big-headedness comes in handy. :)

Part of the current routine includes two non-stress-tests (NSTs) a week. The good news is that the tech doing the NSTs is nice and we usually find stuff to talk about. It seems that Lydia is noticing that she tends to be jostled by medics around the same time of day on a regular basis, since one day when I didn't happen to have an appointment, she nevertheless started moving around a lot right on schedule. Now, to make it through the next several weeks of appointments, diet, medication, etc. before we actually get to see her . . .