Because I don't have enough to worry about on a daily basis

Tomorrow is U.B.'s full-on professional ultrasound, where they will be doing some kind of measuring hokey-pokey and (hopefully) giving us decent pictures and a confirmation that, in fact, U.B. is a lady. My O.B. said, though they order these "routine" ultrasounds for everybody, she ordered mine specifically because the ol' baby-oven is measuring a little small for U.B.'s expected age. This is not a terrible surprise to me , because I had only stopped nursing Isaac two months before U.B. was implanted, and, because Isaac (bless him) sucked all my body fat away, I had only had two periods, neither of them exactly normal. Since they calculated U.B.'s gestational age based on my last period, then, it would make sense if her due date would be a little off .

I blogged previously that I had those fancy blood screens done as a preliminary diagnostic to see if there might be anything awry with U.B., you know, just to know these things. The results are in. Well, sorta. First, I am not a carrier of cystic fibrosis, so that's good. But second, though the triple screen results are back, the nurse I talked to over the phone said they hadn't yet been signed off by a doctor, though my CF screen had been. She said what this means is that they want to make sure the gestational age is right before they issue a final report about the triple screen numbers. For those who have not had this done, the "final report" is basically a list of statistics. My statistics with Isaac were something like that there was a 1 in 80,000 chance he had trisomy 18, a 1 in 24,000 chance he had spina bifida, etc etc...with the final picture being that he was unbelievably likely to be completely normal. All these statistics are calculated based on the gestational age, meaning if the latter is off, the statistics will be wrong.

While I obviously have good reason to think U.B.'s gestational age would be off, of course I am a little worried. It couldn't be THAT off, could it? The nurse over the phone told me all the results looked just fine to her naked eye for U.B.'s estimated gestational age, which relieved me somewhat, but when I asked if it was maybe routine for them to wait to sign off on this crap until one has an ultrasound, she was a little evasive. Great.

To top it all off, two days ago I got FOUR medical-bill related items in the mail. One was a statement from my insurance saying that they had paid Dr. Suck's exorbitant $95 fee, which he earned by making me wait for an hour and then talking to me for 5 minutes. Two others were from the hospital here, saying that I didn't have insurance to cover my charges from my first visit (um...yes, I do, punks). The last, and by far the most eyebrow-raising, came from the UW medical center, who is now trying to bill me $758 for the day I spent in the hospital LAST FEBRUARY when I was pregnant with Isaac and having preterm contractions. I remember this fiasco, because my insurance wouldn't pay for it without an itemized bill. I called the hospital at the time and asked them to send an itemized bill to the insurance, so what has happened I don't know. All I know is that my poor little small-stuff-sweating-self can only take so much more of this health-care monkey business before I go postal.