34 weeks…
Alright I have some catching up to do… the last couple weeks have been busy! This post will cover the 34 week doctor’s appointment. Wanna know more about what things with Maddy are like at 34 weeks? Look here.
Now I honestly don’t remember all that much about the appointment. These things are becoming routine and everything seems to be going by the book as far as Madeline is concerned, so the details fade rather quickly.
Thankfully though, my wife has a WORM memory and wrote a mail message to me recapping a few of the “more interesting” details of the appointment.
First, Jess has been doing some extra-curricular reading on lots of pregnancy related stuff and one thing she came across was another description of toxoplasmosis and potential causes, etc. Now we were already well aware of the most popular way toxoplasmosis can be transferred (cat litter boxes), but even this method requires that the cats have eaten some kind of raw meat (via small rodent or otherwise) and/or generally be outside where they can pick it up. Our cats have never stepped outside, and have never had access to eat any small rodents, or anything with any kind of “meat” so we knew this wouldn’t be a concern. Even so, I agreed most graciously to take on the responsibility of cleaning the cat box for the duration of the pregnancy… just to be safe.
So in the particular article she read, one potential transfer method mentioned was “outside gardening without gloves” which Jess had just been doing with her dad the weekend before. This threw her immediately into a virtual panic state (ok maybe not quite a panic state) that she was overly concerned about and couldn’t wait to talk to the doctor about. Jess did bring up the question in the appointment and, as suspected, there was really no cause for alarm… the doc thought long and hard and could remember only one case of toxoplasmosis she had seen in her entire career. Granted, our doc seems young and probably hasn’t seen a great number of patients, but I think she was also speaking for all the 7(?) docs in the group while she’s been there which is several years. I think we can safely say the odds are less than 1 in several hundred.
Oh yeah and regarding Jess’ panic… her words in the email to remind me of this event: “my panicking over toxoplasmosis” 
And second, Jess became very unsure as to the certainty with which they are able to nail down the baby’s gender via ultrasound. Dr. Nelson stated that the sonographer would normally not state the baby’s gender if they weren’t darn near 100% sure of what they were able to tell from the sonogram. Jess had asked ours: “Is it like 100% a girl?” To which the sonographer responded: “Oh yeah…. 100%.”
Personally, I don’t think that leaves much room for doubt. 