Wednesday, December 21, 2011

Congratulations! It's a...

baby! We're now 99 percent sure we are indeed having a human child. I say 99 because ultrasound babies do look like aliens. Cute aliens, yet aliens nonetheless.

Monday afternoon we had our first ultrasound at my 20-week mark, and not only did we get to see our baby, we were also able to rule out any placenta issues from my fun trip to the hospital the night before. Speaking of that, there was one thing I failed to mention that occurred during our trip. Nothing major, I just like to be detailed, and I left something out.

When they were checking me for various whatevers and listening to the baby's heartbeat, I was also given this strapped contraption to wear around my stomach to determine if I was having any contractions. After an hour of that I guess they figured out I wasn't having any and took it off. I kept trying to figure out how it would alert them, thinking maybe an alarm would go off or something fun and scary like that. Andrew told me last night there was actually a print-out, sort of like a heart monitor shows. He likes to bring me back to reality and ruin my fun :)

So now we can get to the part most of you probably care about--the ultrasound pictures! The tech gave us three to take home with us--two are actually 4D pics, which we honestly find somewhat creepy and weren't expecting, yet we love them anyway!

Profile pic--head is on the right side, belly on the left with legs over head and a hand over the head

Partial face pic on the left

Better face picture

And those are our first baby pictures! We had a moment where I think the tech thought my husband was slightly nuts. He began by asking questions about what she was doing--he was more interested than I expected. When we finally got past the measuring of the uterus and stuff like that (and I got to go to the bathroom--they make you have a full bladder for the first part...and generally run late...great combination!) we saw our first picture of the baby. Andrew said, "So, our baby is half head?"

Great question. The tech looked at him blankly and replied, "I'm not sure what you're asking?" So I then had to translate that my husband did not think our child would always have a large head disproportionate to its body, but that at this stage, babies have larger heads that make up about half of their size. I'm glad he talks...he just has a less serious view of the pregnancy right now that doesn't come across with the pros sometimes :)

We also learned that Baby Floyd is slightly uncooperative as it never moved into a great position for the tech to get what she needed on the brain. She also wanted more on the fingers and some of the heart. At this point, we don't know if our child has fingers, but I sure hope so! I'll have another one in a month to see if we can find those things. 

Unfortunately for me, as she was trying desperately to get our baby to move into a better position, she kept pushing on my right side--where I had those pains Sunday night. The head was right there. My side is still a little tender, but my midwife provided a comforting explanation in our appointment that followed. She really felt I was having a ligament spasm, and those areas would be tender for a few days just like any muscle that spasms or cramps. She also dropped to the floor and gave us an interesting demo for ways to stretch out those areas. Andrew thought she was passing out--turns out she could be my favorite midwife yet! Very dedicated--I'm pretty sure you'd rarely see a doc do something like that :) She was also wearing a really interesting outfit that involved a longer black skirt and colorful striped knee socks...reminiscent of the wicked witch from The Wizard of Oz...that made this demo even funnier.

For those of you not in New England, try and remember this is New England. Some things tend to be a little hippier (which I love!) and may seem off-the-wall to Southern ways. Soon I'll update you all on some of my birth choices--we finally found our doula!

No comments:

Post a Comment