Tomorrow at 10 am is my 16 week doctor’s appointment. At my last checkup, I spent twice as long waiting as I did seeing the doctor, but she did quickly mentioned the next appointment would be when they check for Down Syndrome and other scary birth defects. Birth defects affect babies in different ways, depending on the severity and what part(s) of the body are involved. When parents think that they’ve been exposed to toxic chemicals in the workplace, a birth injury attorney or birth defect attorneys can offer legal advice and judgment in birth defect cases. I completely skipped those chapters in What to Be Terrified of Expect and I might have accidentally thrown away all the pamphlets they gave me at the first appointment, so I don’t really know what they’ll be checking. I’m hoping it involves another ultrasound so maybe we can resolve the boy/girl question a few weeks early. Then I can buy BABY STUFF. But for the next 12 hours I’m going to be a nervous wreck, especially after Jezebel re-posted this article today (just in case anyone who reads this didn’t see it). I have completely blocked out the part of my mind that wants to think or talk about what the results of tomorrow exam means. Seriously, I can’t even bring myself to type anything about it. So just send your prayers, happy thoughts and any extra good karma you might have laying around my way and I’ll post an update as soon as I can.

APPOINTMENT UPDATE: Today was useless. No ultrasound, just a Doppler to make sure there was a heartbeat (there was). I also had blood drawn for a quad screen test but no results for a couple weeks, and a flu shot. Now I’m all kinds of tired from staying up worrying plus the needles made me feel queasy so I’m just going to take a nap. My ultrasound is on November 6th.