She's a girl!

Our 20 week ultrasound went beautifully yesterday. Well, except for the part where they re-booked me for an hour later and failed to let me know, so I sat there with a full bladder for a bit longer than is considered humane by the World Health Organization.

Our ultrasound tech was a great score, she was experienced and young and talked us through the whole thing, showing us what she was seeing and breaking the rules a bit by telling us that from what she could see everything looked good. I requested pictures of the baby picking her nose or throwing the horns if she could do it and she did her best. She talked us through the 4 chambers of the heart, the major veins and arteries she was looking for, both in the baby and also from my uterus to the placenta, we got to see some blood flow, we got to see her arm bones, kidneys, brain, the tib/fib in each of her legs, check out her face for cleft palette etc etc.

The tech told us the baby is measuring a bit small, but not too small. In the 36th percentile. She weighs 9 ounces at this point(only!) and is measuring about 18.5 weeks even though she is really a few days short of 20 weeks. I want her to be strong but a petite baby is a novelty in my family and would be nice in terms of birthing. But she's got a lot of opportunity to bulk up and I won't put it past her to do it.

Our tech said that she wasn't able to get a good picture of the spine due to the baby's movement, so she took a couple non-standard pics. She said the doc may ask for a followup ultrasound to get a better spine picture, and if that happens not to worry. Very kind of her to say, and it would be awesome to get another peek inside and spy on her again!

My philosophy is if the baby's personal space bubble is inside my personal space bubble it's fine to inconvenience her to get the info we'd like.

It was amazing to have almost 30 minutes to look at (and through)the baby! I have not started to feel movement yet so it's totally bizarre to see this functioning human on tv and then try to make the mental connection that actually, she is inside of me. Right now!

Actually, the (relative) worst part of the whole affair was at some point the tech had to jam the little wand into my belly button, which is a total no-fly zone in my regular life, since belly buttons are super gross. The tech told us about a patient she had who, due to various surgeries had his bellybutton removed. That actually seems fairly awesome.

After the ultra sound we spent some time high-fiving in the parking lot and then it was back to work to sit at my desk all jacked up on adrenaline and not being able to concentrate at all.

Rob and I can't express how grateful and excited we are to add to the pack of girls in our families and provide another cousin to the fold. What a privilege to raise a girl and we can't wait to see what she's like! She is probably going to make us crazy!

It was knit night last night so no time to scan photos, but I should get the chance today. We got 4 nice ones. I will update!