A Possible Son

Lots of happenings this week! Our baby is about 3 inches long, about the size of a peach.

On Monday we went for a check up at the OBGYN and heard the heartbeat - amazing! We have it recorded in Nate's phone...we have to figure out how to upload it somehow.

Early this morning Nate and I went to the doctor's office for a "sequential screening." This is basically an ultrasound and a two part blood test (part 1 today, part 2 in three weeks) to try and screen for down syndrome and so on. They measure the back of the neck, check the heart, and look at the spine for any abnormalities. I wasn't really interested in doing it, until I found out we had been pre-approved by our insurance and that an ultrasound was involved! I just didn't want to find out a possible defect with our child that would stress me out the whole pregnancy, seeing as I don't think I could bring myself to abort.

We had a female nurse first do the ultrasound...and she was in training so for a good 20 minutes she studied our baby from head to toe, which was great for us because we watched the whole thing on a big screen. We saw all the fingers and all the toes, the brain and and spine....as well as the little beating heart. The baby was full of energy; bounding and twirling and rolling...so amazing to watch! Looks like we have a hyper one! Then she said....hmm...now that could be the umbilical cord but....that looks like a {boy part}! And she froze and zoomed in the shot and, sure enough, it looked a lot like a little boy. But it's too early to be sure so I'll just have to wait until August to know! But I'll be calling the baby a "he" from now on, unless I find out otherwise, as I really don't like calling him "it".

The doctor then came in and double checked everything. He said the baby looked great, and there was no thickness on the back of the neck (meaning probably down syndrome negative).

At one point the doctor was trying to get the baby to move...so he starting nudging my abdomen hard...and boy did my baby squirm! Poor thing.

So all in all very exciting morning! Out next ultrasound is August 25th...so that is the big day to look forward to!