The story so far….Anastasia and her husband, Nick, have been married for 3 years and are expecting their first baby. Twelve weeks down the road here’s her pregnancy diary

Testing Time

Well I made it to the BIG TWELVE. I had a glass of champagne with Nick to celebrate and, contrary to what many of my pregnant friends have reported, it tasted good. The theory that pregnant women are only meant to avoid what we naturally don’t want during pregnancy has been demolished. Most of my friends went off the taste of alcohol and coffee completely. Not me. Better watch it.

Along with the happy milestone of getting past the first trimester miscarriage risk, there comes another range of issues to deal with – the tests. The triple test is a blood test that gives an indication of the risk of the foetus having Down’s syndrome or neural tube defects, such as spina bifida. A blood test sounds simple enough, but it’s really a question of what to do if this blood test gives a dodgy result. If it does, the next step is an amniocentesis, performed between weeks 16-18, whereby a needle draws out a sample of amniotic fluid to test more accurately for abnormalities. The problem is, the test itself carries a risk of miscarriage. And, it takes four weeks for the results to come, so you could be 22 weeks pregnant, more than half way there and feeling your baby kick, and be told that your baby has a serious problem. Then you have to decide whether to terminate the pregnancy or not. In a word: horrifying.

It turns out that my hospital, Chelsea & Westminster, doesn’t offer the blood test, at least not to women under 35, which surprises me. I toy with the idea of just ‘going for it’ without the test, but decide to arrange for it privately instead. The blood test is combined with a scan and your results give you an estimation of your baby’s risk. Nick came with me and was as confident as I was uneasy.

Pretty Baby

The moment I had seen so many times in films finally arrived and, somehow, I felt strangely detached. Lying there holding my husband’s hand, we both stared adoringly at a black and white television screen and marvelled at the beauty and wonder of our baby. Problem was, I just couldn’t get it through my head that the fuzzy picture of the surface of Mars on the screen was actually a part of my own body, inside my uterus, and would someday call me ‘mum.’ Nick was more believing – he asked tons of questions and seemed to understand the answers. I just lay there feeling like a science experiment, wondering if each moment of silence from the technician was her way of devising how she’d break the bad news that something was wrong with our baby. My fears were unfounded. Baby seemed absolutely fine and a week later I got a phone call telling me that my risk of having a child with Down’s or spina bifida is something like 1 in 3,955. This is, of course, a meaningless statistic to the worry-prone, but the doctor convinced me that it’s the best ‘score’ I could have had on the test. Now, that I understand. Phew. And we have a few scan pictures that do move me when I have the chance to gaze at them alone, in the privacy of my own kitchen. S/he has my nose. Amazing.

Hearing Things

My good friend Lisa from Chicago came with her two year old to stay for a few days. Unfortunately my tolerance level, although up from a 1 to about a 3.5, is still worryingly low. A two-year-old in a non-childproofed house is worse than a bull in a china shop. Within 30 minutes of their arrival, my favourite Calvin Klein sunglasses were smashed and cherry handprints stained my yellow seat cushions. I tried to remain calm and cheerful but my acting skills were suffering too.

Luckily, I was distracted by a fantastic gift that Lisa brought me – it’s called First Sounds and it’s a device that allows you to listen to the sounds of your unborn baby via headphones. I couldn’t wait for Nick to get home so we could check out what our little sprout sounded like in there. That night we linked up the double set of headphones and I placed the device on my bare stomach. After much interference, we began to hear some amazing things. The booklet said that a dull ‘thud’ is the baby kicking; a ‘whoosh’ is the nutrients absorbing from the placenta, and knocking sounds indicated further movement against the wall of the uterus. We listened to various thuds, knocks and whooshes, in amazement, for three nights in a row, until one night Nick said, ‘let me try something.’ He put the device on his own stomach. You guessed it – thud, whoosh, and knock-knock. We looked at each other and burst into laughter…the things you find your self doing during pregnancy.

Catch up on Josa Young's pregnancy diary Weeks 12-14.