Graduation Day...

Our growing baby, complete with arm and leg buds

All fertility patients look forward to "graduation day".  I really don't know if everyone calls it that, but anyone whose gone through fertility treatment knows the concept.  Reaching "graduation day" means reaching a milestone; the multiplying cells in your body are transitioning to a fetus.  Although its really no bigger than a fingernail at this point, on a sonogram you can begin to detect the umbilical cord, head, body and even arm and leg buds. No matter how much you love and/or depend on the guidance and reassurance of your fertility doctors, you eventually have to move on.  Their job is to get you pregnant; you see someone else to stay that way.

We graduated straight to a renowned team of specialists who frequently work with patients from Shady Grove.  Most pregnant women are cared for during their pregnancy by an ob/gyn doctor, but a select few are cared for by perinatologists.  These are doctors who specialize in the practice of maternal-fetal medicine, or "high-risk" pregnancies.  There are lots of ways a pregnancy can be classified as "high-risk", including previous pregnancy complications, age, physical characteristics of either the mother or the developing fetus, and carrying multiples just to name a few.  The team of doctors that make up our practice are some of the best in the area; they run the Antenatal Diagnostic Testing Center at INOVA Fairfax Hospital, and are incredibly skilled at what they do.  Their practice is called Parinatal Associates of Northern Virginia.  Our primary doctor has been Dr. Barbara Nies, but we've see the entire team of doctors (Khoury, Bronsky, and Al Kouatly) during our pregnancy.

They are smart doctors, and I believe they've already saved our baby once.  But we'll get to that later.