Second scan
Thursday, 8th March 2007 by tom09:54 this morning saw us bright-faced and cheery in the queue at the reception of the ultrasound department at Queen Charlotte’s Hospital. 09:55 saw us being cross with ourselves for confusing appointments and subsequently being 15 minutes late for our 09:40 scan.
Fortunately the mix-up didn’t cost significantly and we were soon seen by a friendly sonographer who introduced herself as Sarah. This time, the ultra-sound department were not short-staffed and we had a lovely long scan. The sonographer talked us through the whole thing and we saw lots of our little lad. And indeed that is what he appears to be, we saw the evidence from quite a few angles so it’s fairly certain that it’s a boy.
One thing that became obvious was that the sonographer was very interested in his upper lip. He kept covering his mouth with his hands, but she kept returning to it. So it wasn’t a great surprise when she told us that he has a cleft lip. Poor woman, having to break such news and not knowing what kind of reaction to expect. Little did she know that we were already prepared for the news because cleft lips can be associated with Waardenburg Syndrome which runs in the Brazier family. And of course my mum herself has a cleft lip.
The most immediate consequence of this is that we’ve been elevated to a high risk level and so suddenly all sorts of people are interested in us. And in medical circles this, of course, means a lot of waiting around. We were sent upstairs to the Centre for Foetal Care where, presently, we saw the doctor. She confirmed the diagnosis and wanted us to see the consultant. He eventually arrived and also confirmed the diagnosis.
So the poor tyke will be having surgery somewhere around the 3-6 month mark and possibly another round or two as he grows older. Other than that, everything looks just fine. The medical professionals are slightly worried that the cleft lip may be symptomatic of some chromosomal abnormality. They’ve pretty much discounted Waardenburg because they don’t think it’s associated with cleft lips, but that doesn’t say much as none of them had heard of Waardenburg until this morning. We’re not overly concerned because even a casual Google search turns up plenty of articles which confirm the link to Waardenburg.
But enough about all that, isn’t he cute:
