Boy was Tuesday and up and down day.

It started out right up there, at Burnside hospital when we went in for our first ultrasonic scan of our baby. Our baby, who, from here till birth shall be named wrigglebum for reasons I will get to. It really blew me away how much it jumped around, rolled over, arched it's back, waved its arms and kicked its legs. I must admit I haven't been keeping up with the baby reading and I was quite shocked at how active it was.

Wanna see the pictures? (Click 'em for bigger versions)


Side Profile


Face and Brain


Hanging a mooner

It turned out we had lots of time to watch wigglebums antics, because the medical professionals were trying to perform a nuchal translucency test, which required the baby to lay flat in there and hold still, so they could measure the skin fold on the back of it's neck. We started at 8:30, and after a couple of hours of Karen emptying little bits of her bladder, jumping up and down, coughing, getting gently shaken by the nurse and trying the scan on all fours, wigglebum still wasn't going to cooperate. So it was decided that the best course of action was for us to go to work for a few hours and come back in the afternoon.

This was where the roller coaster really plummeted down the other side of the crest. Not because we went to work, but because Floyd was at the vet having an operation on what we thought was impacted anal glands (sorry to those eating). However a phone call from the vet confirmed our worst fears, that he actually had 2 mast cell carcinomers.

Pow! That bit of news ploughed into me like a freight train let me tell you.

The vet was quite pessimistic at the time of the phone call, because while he removed the cancers, he had noticed other lumps. We could do nothing but fear the worst, and as we returned to the ultrasound room it was up and down the roller coaster as I delighted at the baby jumping around in Karen's belly but fretted about poor old Floyd.

Incidently, the baby still didn't cooperate, so Karen is off to Ashford on Friday to have another go.

Anyway, when we got home, the vet was a little more optimistic, because his preliminary tests on the other lumps showed no mast cells. This however needs to be confirmed by the several biopsies he performed, the results of which will be in Friday. Fingers and toes crossed.

Happily, aside from the bucket on his head and the stitches in his rear, Floyd seems rather normal now. Sooky and hungry. We can only hope for the best.

Finally, for the statistics hungry folk, our baby is 8cm head to bum, with a 2cm set of legs. Which means it's currently 1/18th my height.