So this is what it's like to have a high risk pregnancy. Well at least we had no new trips to the hospital, thank goodness.

Last week my OB's office called to warn me we'd be getting an official letter from the State of California. It seems my triple screen test came back positive for Down Syndrome. My OB reviewed the results and asked them to rerun the test using age 34 instead of 39, since I was 34 when our frozen tot was created. When the State reran the test, it came back negative for Down Syndrome, but because the first result was positive, Jack and I are eligible for genetic counseling with our perinatologist. I was laughing on the phone with the nurse as she was telling me all this, thinking, "Yeah right we have a Down Syndrome child," because (ahem) she has a long femur and Down's babies have short femurs. Even so, Jack and I have shifted our thinking to include Special Olympics fame.

Friend Sarah came to visit us for three days and, to make me feel at home, she wore her pyjamas and lounged around with me sipping tea, watching the tube and gabbing. It was delightful. While she was here I did have some scary new abdominal pains last Friday. Although I was very concerned that my cervix was dilating and labor pains would be imminent, the doctor on-call said if my bleeding didn't significantly increase then bedrest is all I could do anyway. Thank the Sweet Lord the pains stopped by Sunday. Woohoo!

Of course Monday night I ended up on the bathroom floor, shaking, sweating, fighting back simultaneous nausea, diarrhea and loss of consciousness. Jack really loves when I do that.... It passed so we didn't call the doctor. Had I hemorrhaged at the same time I would have gone right to the hospital. I was not dehydrated. I have been having a few vasovagal responses (especially after transabdominal ultrasounds) which may be caused by pressure exerted by my growing daughter on my nerves and arteries. Ah, motherhood.

Jack marvelled the other night about how many people get pregnant fairly easily and go on to have normal pregnancies without a daily white-knuckle existence. He says, "I'll breathe easy when you make it to October 15th." That will mark 28 weeks, which would be a relatively safe time to deliver a preemie. A baby born at 21 weeks does not survive.

Earlier this year I began to complain that *somebody* had gone ahead and renewed my subscription to the Disease of the Month Club without me knowing. Although I'm still not worried about the partial placenta previa diagnosis (yet), I can't figure out what it means to have an apple-shaped clot in there with our baby. A subchorionic hematoma - a blood clot that forms between the placenta and the uterine wall - can result in early labor. But that doesn't seem to be my situation. We'll know more when we see our perinatologist again. Let's all pray that clot has completely disappeared by the time I have that ultrasound on Monday!