It’s a boy! I know that the scan is never 100% accurate for sex determination, but I would say that it was fairly unambiguous.
We had a very nice trainee sonographer, followed by a fully qualified one to double check things. The upside being that we had more time staring at our baby.
I was unprepared for the level of detail that the scan would go into (not in resolution, as you can see from the attached snapshot). We got to see all of the things that they were checking for abnormalities like the heart ventricles and the various sections of the brain, the kidneys, the umbilical cord and the placenta. I am overjoyed to say that all seemed to be normal, with no swelling in the brain, symmetrical heart ventricles and two kidneys. The placenta is attached highish on the rear wall of Hannah’s uterus, so no worries about it causing problems with the delivery and we were even able to see that the umbilical cord had the three blood vessels it’s supposed to have and is well attached. All very gratifying, but the best thing was just being able to sit and watch our son waving his arms around, sucking his thumb and generally just being a baby.
He’s also growing nicely. At first they thought he was a bit small, but they were using our original due date so that was corrected by using the date given by the 12 week scan. They measure all sorts of things like the length of the femur (which you can actually see!) and the circumference of the head and tummy. Very impressive, and fascinating to watch. They reckon he weighs about 14 ozs at the moment. I asked Hannah how she explained all the weight she was carrying in that case, which got me a good slap ๐
All in all, a very enjoyable experience. The scan was lovely to be involved in, and the clinic appointment afterwards was very efficient (no waiting around for any of the things we had today) but with plenty of time spent by midwife and doctor talking to us so we felt well looked after.
So, here’s the latest picture. It isn’t as good to view still as it was on the monitor but you can probably figure out what’s what.
Half way!
At 20wks Milly had a big tummy measurement, which worried us a bit. Turns out, she was fine, just a chubber.
I don’t have a baby “blog”, but I do have an RSS feed. http://del.icio.us/rss/trj/baby
I will have a look at it if you explain what RSS means!
Milly is beautiful. She just had a lot of chi at the time of the scan.
Walnut’s measurements were all perfect. It was strange because I’d worried so much on the way to the scan and for several days beforehand that I’d actually convinced myself that there was going to be something seriously wrong. Can’t tell you how relieved I was to hear he’s OK. Hazard with working in hospitals and studying medicine, I guess.
I have stopped reading pregnancy magazines too. They are specifically designed to make pregnant ladies panic. If they’re not telling you birth horror stories or lecturing you for pages and pages about all the ways you could accidentally harm your baby, they’re showing graphic images of ladies in birth and giving you “the lowdown on tearing”.
I am a born worrier which is the main problem. At the moment I’m happy because my kidney infection has cleared up, the contractions which started on Friday (probably caused by the infection) have gone and the scan says everything is OK.
I am drinking 1/2 L cranberrry juice a day at the moment to try to stop the kidney infection coming back. Combine that with my 1/2 L soya milk, OJ, water and all the tea I’m drinking and I’m sloshing about. NO MORE KIDNEY INFECTIONS FOR ME! Plus I’ve had another word with walnut and he’s not going to try ti come out again until March!
I too remember getting freaked out by all the stuff you can read, also I obsessively watched births on the Baby Channel while on maternity leave.
None of this helped.
A lot of weird shit happens to body and mind where pregnancy and babies are concerned. Generally speaking though all the horrendous suffering of pregnancy and birth (especially birth!) are COMPLETELY forgotten at the moment they fling a screaming, goo covered child onto your stomach after you have spent the best part of a day pushing the bugger out.
Nothing I have ever experienced has ever been that good, although it is pretty funny watching the look of horror on the trainee midwife’s face an hour later when they come to sew you up ๐
I hope the rest of your pregnancy/birth go well, try not to worry, everything is fairly inevitable now anyway.
Best of luck
Sara