Introducing ...

Baby Girl Wolfrum!

Forgive me for the detail and length in this post - I really don't want to forget any of it :)

I was a bit worried the morning of the ultrasound. I hadn't slept well because of a) a cold, b) frequent potty breaks and c) the fact that I knew I needed to be up early and didn't want to risk sleeping through the alarm. At one point when I woke up, I realized it was raining pretty hard. A little after 6 a.m., Tim woke me up to tell me the power had gone out. It was back on within the half hour, but I kept wondering if rain on your ultrasound day is supposed to be a sign of good luck, much like rain on your wedding day is supposed to be (and I'm on board with this because we had rain on our wedding day, too).

We drove to the appointment separately because Tim had to head to work right after and I planned to do some shopping for maternity clothes :)

We got to the office about five minutes early. I always look for my favorite nurse, Dawn, and this time someone else - the ultrasound tech - came out to get us. I had figured Dawn might get my weight, blood pressure and urine sample before the ultrasound, but it turned out we went right to Ultrasoundville.

The tech asked if we'd only had the one ultrasound (at six weeks). We said yes, and then she put the goo on my stomach. Tim had been making fun of me because he said the goo makes a funny noise when it splatters out and would be cold when they put it on. And it was heated - the woman was a saint :) I had called the week before and they had told me I didn't have to drink a certain amount of liquid before the ultrasound, but I always try to drink a lot on the mornings of my appointments so I don't have trouble giving the urine sample, and I had quite the full bladder. The tech noticed that.

She asked if we wanted to know the gender, and we told her yes. She said she was going to look at the heart first, and then apparently Baby's position didn't allow her to do that. The next thing I knew, she said, "It's a girl!" and showed us exactly what evidence she had to support that claim.

The limbs on the right side of the image are Baby's legs/knees.
This photo is from the bottom up.

I admit, I cried a bit. I looked at Tim - I'd always told him it was a girl - and when the baby continued to not be cooperative, I told him to tell his daughter to behave and start cooperating. She did not listen. (We still have a lot of work to do on this parenting/discipline thing.)

The tech then moved to Baby's head and measured everything. There were numbers popping up on the screen that alarmed me a bit - we were there exactly at 18 weeks. Some of the numbers on the screen showed "19 weeks, 6 days." I asked the tech if that meant the baby's head was measuring big, and she said no, those numbers didn't mean anything. I'm sure our daughter is a brainiac, but I didn't want her head to be abnormally large. (I admit, I worried a bit about delivering a baby with a huge head.) Later, she took some other measurements that said "18 weeks, 2 days" and said those were the ones that mattered and were right on target.

I started to feel a bit sick - I think it was the pressure of the wand, the excitement of the morning and the fullness of my bladder. The tech took photos of all of the organs and basic bone structures - kidney, bladder (if it's anything like mine, Baby Girl, it'll be tiny), nasal area, etc. Then the tech suggested that we try emptying my bladder to see if that helped with the scan at all.

It turns out it didn't, really. Baby moved - flipping position, but keeping her spine to us. She was tucked in to a corner, and the tech had to really dig the wand in to my belly a few times to try to get a good view/probe her out. When we got back in the ultrasound room, the tech had a phone call about a new ultrasound machine, which was due to arrive the next day. Tim and I both looked at each other like "We missed out on a new machine by one day?!" After my potty break, I felt better and was glad I could enjoy more of what was going on, and the tech took some measurements of the bones and then zeroed in on the heart, which was really cool.

We could see everything pumping and got to watch it for quite some time ... because Baby Girl wouldn't move enough to get accurate measurements of the right side of the heart. My friend Kate had sent me an e-mail wishing us good luck - and I had received the e-mail as we were walking in to the doctor's office. She included a link to her blog- specifically, an article about the "big ultrasound" being more than just about finding out the gender of the baby - it's an important time to check on the growth and development. One of Kate's twin daughters was born with a congenital heart defect, and although I don't understand a lot of the medical terminology behind it, I've gotten the basic understanding and watched Kate and her family go through a lot as they deal with the baby's heart condition. Kate wanted to be sure that I knew what questions to ask during the ultrasound, because a lot of heart problems aren't detected during the "big ultrasound." I was so glad we got her e-mail when we did, and I shared the article with Tim.

I asked the tech some of the questions from the article and explained to her why I was curious, telling her a little bit about Kate and her daughter and how Kate is a big advocate of advocate of using the "big ultrasound" to find out more than sugar and spice or puppy dog tails. I think the tech really started to open up at that point, explaining more about what we were looking at and how things looked normal, and understanding that we really did care about how Baby W. was growing and not just what color to paint the nursery.

The tech said she was going to have us come back for another scan but assured us that everything looked good structurally, and she wasn't concerned about anything she saw, but she wanted to get better measurements on that right side of the heart and Baby Girl just wasn't cooperating.

The tech also checked the cervix and umbilical cord and said everything looked great.

I wasn't aware that my office also does 3D ultrasounds, too, but the tech brought out a second wand and said, "Let's get some 3D shots of her." We got some really cool looks at her face. In some of the photos, she looked really annoyed and angry. I think she has Tim's nose, too.

Here, Baby Girl is smiling :)

Baby Girl, back to serious sleeping.
The tech said she's all snuggled up to the placenta.
Maybe these kids should get pillows in there.

We're glad everything looks good and are excited about knowing it's Baby Girl Wolfrum in there. I decided to celebrate by taking Baby Girl on a shopping trip and getting a Shamrock Shake.

Alien Baby's features - the eye sockets and nose are on the right side of the image.

Big little baby feet!

One of my favorites: Baby's profile. Tim immediately
commented that this is how I sleep - and he knows it well,
because usually the arm above my head ends up whacking him in the face :)
Later that night, Tim put his hand above his head and said "Who am I?"
I looked at him and he said, "Duh! I'm being the baby!"