hello we are the doctors bjorkman and this week we're bringing you a special just in real life
Edition giving you up to date on our pregnancy number two also known as a vlog yes so much like
we did with pregnancy number one two years ago and now that we've gone through our struggles
with secondary infertility IVF now wanting to keep you up to speed with this second pregnancy
yeah so this week we are so excited to share with you our first very first ultrasound confirmation
of pregnancy ultrasound as well as bringing you along while I kind of struggled to do that
um sneak peek test for early finding out the sex of the baby early um so we are going to show you
all of that right after this yeah and in case you've never met us before I'm Curt I'm a board
certified pediatrician I'm Sarah I'm a board certified OB GYN and we are the doctors bjorkman
foreign
welcome back so this week the first thing we want to share is kind of our very first ultrasound we
did this at six weeks and four days based on my Embryo transfer dating this is like
the confirmation of pregnancy scan making sure that little embryo is growing appropriately in
the uterus this is something very very common with IVF pregnancies they tend to check your pregnancy
hormone early in very early in pregnancy after a year transfer and they kind of trend that every 48
hours and then kind of a week later and then bring you in usually for an early scan in the first six
seven around the six seven week Mark just to look and make sure everything is growing and going as
we would expect it to this isn't always something that happens if you get pregnant the old-fashioned
way a lot of times you take a home pregnancy test you find out you're positive it's positive and you
call your OB and you say hey I'm pregnant they ask you for you know the date of your last period and
figure out your due date and often like to bring you in somewhere between the 8 10 ish week Mark
to do confirm the pregnancy do your first prenatal visit and talk about genetic testing at that point
so you may go for an early scan depending on your history or if it's an IVF pregnancy your
OB may want you to wait till a little later down the road awesome and we've talked all about kind
of that first prenatal visit before but would you mind just saying like what are they looking
for on this ultrasound this confirmation like so on a confirmation of pregnancy ultrasound
we know based on your just stational age so the length of in gestational age is measured from
the first day of the last menstrual period or IVF transfer date that's you know basically all
goes back to calculating off that last menstrual period And there are certain things we expect to
see on ultrasound based on how many weeks along you are so around five or so weeks we expect to
see a gestational sac and shortly after that then we see a gestational sac and a yolk Sac those are
the things that come next and right around that six six and a half week Mark we start to see a
fetal Pole or the little tiny peanut that is the becomes the fetus these are as these things come
around six and a half weeks usually we can see a heartbeat and there are expected measurements for
all of these different things that correlate with your gestational age so we do those measurements
we look for those things to make sure it lines up with how far along you are because if it isn't an
IVF pregnancy sometimes it you know maybe you ovulated earlier or later than you thought and
so we use those early ultrasounds to confirm your dating and establish a firm due date yeah and for
us since this was an IVF pregnancy we were very certain of the dates but we did get a good look
at our own little peanut that fetal pole and even a Doppler of the heartbeat yes so chicken
so also as we mentioned this week we're going to share a little bit of our early
testing of baby sex there is a test called the sneak peek we talked about this a little bit
with our first pregnancy and actually the technology has maybe improved a little bit
I now they say that you can do this blood test as early as six weeks and I feel like when I
did it with cease two years ago it was it said eight weeks but anyway now their website says
as you can do it as early as six weeks yeah but you wait until week seven the biggest
issue here is what you're testing for in the test that you're actually looking at Mom's
blood and as a part of having a growing baby inside some of those baby cells actually end
up in the circulation of mom in something called fetal DNA and so what this test is looking for
is actually looking for Y chromosomes which would only be present if it was a male right
um and so with that the test is looking for some of those cells the further along you are in
pregnancy than the fetal fraction or the it's just more of baby cells that are in mom circulation so
it actually improves the sensitivity of the test the other really important thing to note here is
that it's really easy to contaminate the test so if any boys around so say for instance I was
around when Sarah was doing the testing if any of my little cells got in the test sample it would
then falsely posit it it could say falsely that it was a boy because it picked up some of a micro Y
chromosome for my cells when I was really XX girl fractional DNA right in Mom's circulation yes so I
was very anxious to find out if we were having a boy or girl and some people want to be surprised
and wait till their 20-week ultrasound or wait till the baby's born I know lots of people are
who have waited till the baby is born and they say it's just like the greatest surprise and so if you
can imagine she's a planner and likes to know things as soon as possible so anyway I thought
about should we try this at six weeks and I read a bunch of reviews on like sneak peek thing whatever
and a lot of there were enough reviews of doing it at six weeks who said you know I did it at
six weeks at 12 weeks my genetic testing came back it was wrong or at 20 weeks it was wrong so I said
maybe six weeks is a little early I did it at eight last time let's try seven and that could
be like if you test early it maybe doesn't pick up maybe boys Y chromosome and says falsely that
it's a girl is that probably the most likely instance for that that my thought and I don't
for sure know that this is true but if you don't have a high enough fetal fraction or if you are
less pregnant than you thought or lots of different things it might miss that other
because the default for the test if if you know you send your blood it's going to be XX because
you know your maternal cells are in there and so they have to have enough of those fetal cells to
be able to kind of amplify and see so seven weeks said oh this is good enough let's try it and also
wanted to surprise Kurt and so got the test and did it while I was at work and the first time so
there there are different brands other than sneak peek um this is just like the one we that was
I found and we did last time and it worked and it was correct so we're like let's try it again this
the first time when you did the blood test you had to kind of do like a finger prick and like
milk your dripping bloody finger into a little tube and ice cream like a bunchel it it wasn't it
they also now two years later they have this thing called like a snap device where basically
they send you everything in the box with like very clear instructions they also have a YouTube video
you can watch on how to do it but basically we what you do is they give you a heat pack which
is interesting that you kind of snap and you hold this heat pack on your arm like you do it right
here on your shoulder and you hold it on your arm helps dilate the blood vessels in that area yes
um and um well first you scrub it scrub it scrub it really really good with a brush and then you
put this heat pack on for a few minutes to again help dilate the blood vessels try to
get more blood there and then you wipe it with an alcohol swab and then snap like put on this
device and it's sticky the circle circular device is sticky so it just sticks there and then you
push if there's like a pushy button snap thing and you push it and it does this little kind of poke
on your arm didn't hurt was super easy it ended up being this little circular a round kind of shape
and it's you hold it on for however long till you watch this you can see the little container
fill up with blood so you know that you have enough because you hook on the little
little canister container that the blood needs to get sent in and so you just watch you make
watch it till it gets the line you take it off so I thought it was tremendously easier
than the first time I think the snap device is a little more expensive than the like finger prick
if you're trying to do it by yourself I thought it was way way easier so did that got it all sent
off it was like Yay this is going to be here for the weekend and I'm so excited Kurt has no idea
um and then like a Friday or Saturday he looks at me and he's like what happened to your arm because
I'm so excited about this surprise he's like what is that on your arm because it sort of like looks
like a cigarette burn not exactly but it's just this circle not quite as severe as a burn but
there's definitely like a circle there's just like a circuit little circular scab dab thing and I was
like oh nothing like I just had forgotten about it because it didn't hurt I didn't notice it and
of course like the oh nothing was enough for me initially to be like okay whatever and then
like later that day it dawned on me and I'm like oh I know what that Mark's from I'm finding out
what we're having yes so ah that was annoying so if you're trying to do it as a surprise and you
do the thing on your arm make sure you're wearing like longer sleeves when you're around your person
um because otherwise that might give it away if they put two and two together so I am at
work and just did a little sneak peek to try to have it in time to surprise Kurt this weekend
um here's hoping I didn't screw it up too bad this time I used so when he did it with cease I used
this like little you had to kind of prick your finger and this time they have this handy dandy
little snap thing that you can do on your arm and it was so much easier and less of a bloody mess
so highly recommend so in preparation for this surprise I kind of thought like how am I gonna
surprise him how do I want to do this do we want to do cupcakes do we want to do whatever different
things so what I did Big extravagant party right yeah yeah um no what I did was I ordered
t-shirts Amazon Prime um for cease I ordered a pink one and a blue one because I didn't
know what it was and I sent this test and did like the fast shipping so I had I decided kind of last
minute to try to pull this big surprise off three days later and so I ordered one of each t-shirt
so my plan was I'm gonna get this result we're gonna wake up Sunday morning I'm gonna send her
in in her little t-shirt and it's just gonna be great um ironically only one t-shirt arrived
unfortunately fortunately it was the right t-shirt lucked out um because I think it was fry it must
have been fright Saturday night Friday night while we were sitting outside by the campfire it was
actually me Kurt like my boss um and another friend and I get this email from sneak peek
and I open it and get the results because last time we were both surprised and so the results
had gone to my sister who then if you watched that um we got like cupcakes or colored frosting inside
so she had done got all that set up so that's the other thing if it's something you want to do you
can put in someone else's email to get the results if you both want to be surprised to do something
you know cakes Cupcakes whatever it is possible to do that but this time it came to me so here I am
sitting at a campfire Kurt's right there my boss is right here and I'm just like reading this email
I can't react losing it on the inside like yeah I think I missed that Joy excitement
she probably told someone else I did I think I texted our sonographer and was like oh I
think so pretty sure so this was all just the perfect setup to have this wild party
the next day with a special guest there to tell me the sex of baby bjorkman number two
oh
what do you have what kind of shirt do you have it's a blue shirt
okay I'm a little brother
I know you're gonna have to cheering then so in case you missed it amidst my own blubbering and
Whispering while reading that card baby bjorkman number two is going to be a boy
um and so send help I don't know what to do with boys I had a sister I was guess I'm going to be
a boy mom um so we're so excited um I think Cesar's gonna just love him be the best big
sister yeah here's hoping um so anyway send all your tips for being a boy mom
um we are so excited to continue sharing pregnancy number two with all of you more
great pregnancy and parenting content coming at you in the coming weeks okay bye guys
we're doctors but not your doctors anything we've said in this video
is for education or entertainment purposes only it is not medical
advice any specific medical questions you have should be directed to your provider