Introducing...

our little baby beaver!!!

Our ultrasound this morning was amazing. I don't think there is any other way to describe it. After a few minutes of boring non-baby images the tech finally started the good stuff, beginning with Baby B's head. B had his/her (still a surprise!! I guess I'll alternate...) thumb in his mouth for almost half of the ultrasound. In the beginning, seeing our baby sucking her thumb was so cute, and made the whole having-a-baby-thing so much more real. Then I realized that we could see his cheeks moving in and out: he was sucking his thumb. I think that's when the tears first started pouring from my eyes.

We got to see every little bit of our baby, from her brain to her toes to the individual chambers of her heart to her tiny (1cm!) ears. One of my favorite images was of the bottoms of the two tiny feet (1in). I think his nose is the winner of cutest-baby-part of the day. Almost every single measurement was the same- 18weeks, 4days... one measurement was 19 weeks, but I can't remember what it was! Everything looked perfect to us, and laying there seeing my baby for the first time was one of the best moments of my life.

Another great moment of the ultrasound was finally associating the little things I've been feeling to the baby's movements- I finally believe that I am feeling the baby move!! Now it is much easier to recognize and it is so exciting. Mr. Beaver even spent some time tonight with his hand on my belly and got to feel some little movements. I love that when I feel them now I can picture our little baby moving around in there!

One not so exciting event of the day was the message I got this afternoon from the doctor. They asked me to call as soon as I got a chance, so of course I called immediately. When the radiologist examined our ultrasound, he noticed a bright spot, which the doctor said may be an echogenic bowel. Before telling me that, she assured me that everything with our baby is fine, so I'm a little bit confused. I'm trying not to look stuff up online and read other people's stories until we go in for a follow-up ultrasound next Tuesday to find out if there really is an echogenic bowel. This time the ultrasound will be performed by a doctor, not a tech. And when I called to schedule it, I found out it would not be with the regular imaging department, but with the genetics department. I am upset that I did not get more information from the doctor, but I think I was in shock. I am thinking of calling back tomorrow to try to get some more information to hold me over until Tuesday. The only thing mentioned was a small chance of echogenic bowel being a sign of cystic fibrosis, in which case the next step (if the spot is still there on the next scan) is for me to be tested to see if I carry the CF gene. I wish I knew more, but for now there isn't much we can do but wait until Tuesday.

We decided, for now, all we can do is be positive and continue to enjoy this exciting time in our lives. When we got home from work we watched the 3 minute dvd of the last part of our ultrasound, twice, and pointed out all of the perfect little features of our baby in his/her long strip of photos from this morning. We felt our baby moving around, fed her(me) lots of yummy salad for dinner and then some cake for dessert, and then looked at our collection of pictures again. I can't believe that I am almost to the half-way mark, and that we are only months away from holding our beautiful little baby!!