Scared

We had our 16 week sonogram the other day.  It was eventful in that I threw up during it (you know how I love public vomiting) and after we spent a half an hour watching the pretty pictures of our babies looking like babies, the doctor told us... that Baby B has Single Umbilical Artery (SUA), which means that it has 2 blood vessels in its umbilical cord, not three.  Most of the time this doesn't affect anything, but sometimes it can be linked to heart defects and just having one kidney.  I was so surprised to hear this, mostly because I'd forgotten that we were there to check on the babies' development.  I completely forgot that they might have birth defects!  Everybody has told me for so long that such wracking nausea means lots of hormones, which means a healthy pregnancy. The doc told us that so far, the heart looks just fine, though I guess he couldn't see the kidney yet.  He said he'd check again at our next appointment (3-4 weeks) just to make sure everything was turning out fine.  I comforted James that heart defects are structural things that are easy to fix, either with medicine or with surgery.  And kidneys, who needs more than one anyway? But then yesterday I went online to see more about SUA, something that James didn't want to do because he didn't want to freak himself out.   I freaked myself out. This affects about 1 percent of live births, and 5 percent of multiple births.  It's more common for pregnant mothers who are white (me) and over 40 (not me), and more common when the affected baby is a girl.  (Don't know about that). Beyond the heart and kidney problems that the doctor mentioned, there can also be other structural or neurological problems, like spina bifida and lots of other things I'd never heard of.  (Pretty sure our babies' spines are okay because we did a nuchal translucency test a while ago that turned out fine). But here's the clincher.  Sometimes SUA is associated with chromosomal defects, like missing the 13th or 18th chromosome.  We screened for some chromosomal defects in a blood test, and ruled out Downs, but I don't know about the others.  A chromosomal defect is so scary... SO SCARY because there's nothing to be done about it! I remember back when James and I hadn't been through nearly as much hell trying to conceive.  We thought that if we got pregnant with a child who turned out to have Down Syndrome, we would abort it.  Ha.  NOT BABY B.  I love Baby B more than anything (except Baby A, whom I love equally).  I could never, never hurt Baby B. I hate this. Worrying surely doesn't help.  And beyond that, there's nothing to be done except to take care of my little babies as well as I can from the outside.  So I'm going to have some breakfast and take my vitamins.  It's the least I can do. (I'm posting pictures of the ultrasounds).