The Bauer Confidential

A couple of weeks ago, we went in for a long, detailed ultrasound to check all the anatomy of our baby.  We decided to find out if it was a boy or a girl.  For some reason I had it in my mind that it was a boy, but then two nights before we were to go in for the ultrasound I had a dream we were at the Dr.’s office and they told me it was a girl.  I guess I always had a 50/50 shot.

A tear rolled down my cheek when she told us it was a girl, not of saddness that it’s not a boy, or even of relief that it is a girl, but just general happiness.  Apparently I mostly blocked Matthew getting a good view of the screen because I was so eager to see everything.  The heart, the ribs, the legs, the hands, the face, all skeletal looking but still so cool to see.  She wasn’t particularly cooperative, constantly putting her thumb in her mouth when the poor technician was trying to get a good shot of the face.  If you’d like to see the newest ultrasound pics, they’re in the baby slide show in the photo-section.  Out of respect for the baby’s privacy, we didn’t put up what Matthew likes to refer to as the “R rated” photos where they point out certain parts of the anatomy.

The baby has been kicking me like crazy.  As of right now, I like it because it’s reassuring.  Nice to be aware of her there and to know she’s active and doing well.  I’m sure I’ll tire of it when it starts to become painful.  We’re starting to figure out what we need to get before the baby comes, a pretty daunting task (not to mention expensive).  We had another Dr.’s appointment yesterday where we again heard the heartbeat, and the Dr. told us how pleased she is with the way everything is going and how everything looks normal.  It’s reassuring to hear.

As you can see by our nifty little baby widget in the sidebar, today marks the 120th day of our pregnancy.  This is the halfway point (assuming the baby comes exactly on time, which is highly unlikely).  I have mixed feelings about this.  Part of me is thinking “Woohoo, we’re halfway there, yippee, so exciting, woohoo!”  But the other part of me says “Only halfway done.  Argh!  I’ve been prenant forever already.  I have to do this for another five freaking months.  This is a bunch of crap!”  And the logical part of me knows that the half that lies ahead is going to be much harder than the half that has past.

I know I shouldn’t complain, I’ve been really lucky so far.  My baby bump is just starting to become evident if I’m wearing the right clothes.  I was getting a bit anxious about this, as it seems everyone else was bigger than me by this point.  I went to prenatal yoga last week and the two women who weren’t as far along as me had much more pronounced bellies.  They were also much thinner than me to start with, which probably explains a lot.  I prefer to think it’s just that I’ve got really strong ab muscles, not that my belly fat is hiding the baby ;)  My weight gain (or lack there of) has been good so far, I’ve gained less than five pounds which, considering I was already carrying a little extra insurance in that department, is good.  I started feeling the baby move last weekend; Matthew was even able to feel it with his hand on my tummy.  Now it seems like the baby is moving a lot, especially after I eat.  It doesn’t hurt, just feels a little strange.

Next week we will go for another high detail ultrasound.  If the baby cooperates, we should be able to find out if it’s a boy or a girl.  After some consideration I decided I want know, whether it’s suprise now, or a surprise at the time of the birth doesn’t make a difference to us.  And this will allow us to start getting all our ducks in a row by finding baby stuff and picking out names.

In case you’re curious, here’s how my belly looks at this point.  Didn’t take any before pictures, but you get the idea.

Doctor’s appointments can induce a great deal of anxiety. With a baby in the picture, visits to the doctor are even more nerve racking. We had an appointment this morning to discuss the results of our first semester screening, a combination of sonograms and blood protein screening. About two weeks ago, we left the screening feeling pretty good, as the technician had assured us everything was normal, and we saw for ourselves that we had an extremely active baby on our hands. Today we discussed the blood test with our normal doctor. She was very pleased with the results. Our odds for Down Syndrome are something like 1 in 12,301 (it was a strange number) and the odds for trisomy 18 were something like 1 in 22,000. The doctor said these were the best odds she had seen, which made us feel pretty good. All our other screening has come back negative as well, which is also reassuring. There was no ultrasound this time, but we did get to hear the baby’s heart beat through a fetal monitor (it sounded a lot like the clip on this page). The only stressful part was the minute or so it took the doctor to find the heart beat, but once found it was nice a strong.

Yes, you read the post title correctly.

IT’S A BABY!

And he/she is due 11/23/08.