Oscar

No, Oscar is not the name the Mrs and I have picked for Baby. It is actually the name of the test that the Mrs went through last week. During the Oscar Test the Mrs had to go through an abdominal scan as well as have her blood drawn.

I was kind of worried that during the scan we will be able to tell if Baby is a boy or a girl. A little premature I know, but I was worried my surprise will be ruined none the less. Thankfully we were not able to tell yet.

So, according to Dr Cheng what we should look out for are the nasal bone and the nuchal translucency. To be able to see the nasal bone at this stage is a good thing as it indicates the low risk of Down's syndrome. As for the nuchal translucency you want it to be thin. He then proceeded to measure Baby's head and abdominal circumference.

From the scanes Baby looked good and normal but in order to know for sure we had to wait for the blood test result to be out. By entering all the measurements of Baby, results from blood test and the Mrs's age into a program, Dr Cheng will be able to calculate the risk of Baby having Down's syndrome.

The report was mailed to us and according to the nurses at Dr N's clinic Baby is cleared. The report is very technical and with no one explaining it to us I can only assume from the figures there which states: Adjusted risk - 1:10060 for Trisomy 21 and 1:17519 for Trisomy 13/18. I do not need an expert to tell me that those odds look pretty good.

There were a couple of graphs as well and Baby's result is right there in the middle for all of them.

The Mrs was saying that we are lucky in the sense that Baby has been very cooperative so far when it comes to taking pictures. We have been able to take pretty good shots of Baby so far. Let's hope the Mrs will still find Baby cooperative once Baby starts moving and kicking around.