And The Verdict Is...

Baby High Five

We're into Week 17, which meant another trip to the ultrasound doctor and THAT meant another chance to see baby up close. I'm seriously considering buying an ultrasound machine for home, just because it makes for such cool TV.

The baby is 4 inches from crown to rump, 8 inches overall and weighs a whopping 8 ounces. For all you vegetarians out there, the book described it as the size of a turnip. I'm not a big turnip guy, so we're going with medium-sized tomato. In any case, the baby is big enough now that they can do a bunch of measurements. After hearing that the legs made up half the body, I immediately started researching basketball schoalrships at Duke. Apparently, everything will even out, however, and I will end up paying for college after all. Anyway, all the measurements were normal. Head is good, heart has four chambers (we got to see the blood move in and out), there's a top lip, two ears (one on each side, which was good hear. No pun intended), a nose, stomach on the correct side, gall bladder, two kidneys, ten fingers, ten toes and a perfect little spine. Oh!! And a vagina.

This will help you out NONE. The way it was described to me was "Imagine your baby is sitting on a toilet and you're in the bowl, looking up. That's what this view is." There are apparently three lines which show up pretty well in this shot that say my 50's will be ruined by a teenaged girl.

Yes, the darling little princess is going to be a girl, which is kind of good because the only baby names Melissa and I have ever discussed have been girl's names. Ever. And it would have been embarassing to run around with a boy named Gabriella. Not that we're naming it that, but you get the idea.

The best news is now Melissa knows what color to paint the baby's room when we get a house with a baby's room in it. And she can start buying girls clothes. Thank God! Our long national nightmare of her not being able to shop is over!!

It was also good news because the Habitat for Humanity office is full of pink stuff for their Women Builds and my boss and co-worker, Peggy, immediately appropriated some of that for my office. So, I now have pink curtains and a "Girl Power, Girls Build" shirt which fit the big overstuffed teddy bear Margot got me a few weeks ago and currently holds down my printer.


Girl Bear!!



Curtains!!!





The other good news is Melissa's morning sickness seems to have passed and she's into the "fun" part of pregnancy. You know, the part where you're not too big to fit through a door, but still able to eat whatever you want because you're pregnant. Last night she discovered Baby Girl likes Yoo-Hoo. She drank one of the drink boxes and the baby immediately started kicking around. Which she loved! I don't think anyone has ever had as much Yoo-Hoo in one day as Melissa did today.




Another cool deal was Melissa felt the baby move for the first time yesterday while we were at the doctor. The tech had the ultrasound on her (baby on TV) and said "THAT was a good one." Melissa asked if that was the baby kicking and the woman said "Yes. And it was a strong one." The coolest thing was I got to watch it on the screen. So, when she felt her first kick, I got to see it. It was more like a whole body spasm, but it was still fun to watch.