Our baby = girl, or girly boy.

So we went in for our appointment last week where we were supposed to be able to find out the sex, and this is how that went down:

The nurse started the sonogram which was of course very cool and the baby’s body looked a lot more defined than last time. We even got a good shot of what appears to be a rather sizeable (I won’t go so far as to say disproportional, but if someone else suggested it I probably wouldn’t disagree) arm/hand.  Here are a couple of pics:

Head is on the right, little feet on the left and you should be able to make out the spine along the bottom.  Now for the hand shot:

So here the spine is at the top of the picture so the baby’s facing down, with the body laying left to right.  On the left you see what looks like a big ol’ foot, but no, that is actually a hand being held up next to the head.  Cute huh?

Now for the update on the gender.  So after the nurse looked around a bit and snapped those pics, she said “looks girly, but I’m not really getting the best view.”  Then she had the doc come in to see what he thought, and his take was “looks girly, but don’t go painting the room pink yet.” Ugh. I thought we were supposed to be finding out (relatively) for sure what this baby is going to be! But then after the sonogram was finished and he was about to leave, I decided to press him for more details and pretty much forced him to say how sure he was about girl, to which he responded 80%.  So I guess long story short it is “probably” a girl.  We will allegedly get confirmation of that (or perhaps a surprise) at our next appointment in about 2.5 weeks.  I’m a little skeptical since we thought we were finding out this time, but in reality we aren’t officially supposed to be finding out until 20 weeks and any time before that they are hoping to be able to get a good look.

Although it’s only “probably” a girl, we are pretty much referring to the baby as a girl at this point even though we know we could get a surprise in a few weeks.  In fact yesterday we were out running some errands and of course had to stop to browse through the baby clothes, and Tim found some little pajamas that said ‘daddy’s girl’ and pulled them right off the rack and said we were buying them! I had to remind him that it’s not for sure a girl yet, but it sounds like he is embracing the idea of a little girl. Awww, I guess Tim doesn’t always say/do the wrong baby-related thing.  Even though he seems to be assuming it’s a girl now, I know he would be more than happy if it does end up being a boy, so I’m not too worried about that.  I will post again in a few weeks to report on the (hopefully) definitive conclusion to this girl or boy saga.

E.T. phone home?

I was debating whether or not to put our 14 week sonogram picture up on the blog, because I think it looks a tad bit scary.  Other sonograms I’ve seen from around this time have been cute side-view silhouettes of a baby shape, but we were lucky enough to get the forward facing view complete with smushed face.  When combined with the graininess of the film, the final product is this little (alien-esque?) creature:

For reference, starting on the far left you’ve got a little foot/leg followed by a curled up spine and then the face (with the mouth and eyes shown as dark spots).  I think the left eye is being hidden/squished by a little hand under the head.  If you’re looking at it correctly you should see a little alien baby.  But a cute little alien baby of course.

The nurse said if she had to GUESS the sex, she would guess girl, but when pressed for a confidence level she pretty much folded under the pressure and said it’s too early to tell.  Of course now that the nurse has made her (flimsy) guess, I am all of a sudden anxious to know when before it wasn’t really on my mind at all.  Luckily I recently switched doctors from one that does two sonograms during the pregnancy to one that does more like five (thanks Leah), so we will be getting another look at our little alien at the end of the week (at 17 weeks). Supposedly we should be able to find out the sex at that appointment, so we'll see what they say then. 

This is probably a boring post for those mostly interested in stories about entertaining stuff that Tim has said/done.  Never fear, as there are still five and a half more months (but who’s counting) for him to give me plenty of material on that front.  

Maybe we should sign up for extra tutoring?

When we went in for our first OB appointment, they gave us info. on signing up for childbirth/newborn  classes. I am not crazy about doing this. It’s not that I don’t want to be informed and prepared, it’s just that I’m more of a learn at your own pace kind of girl than a sit through two six hour Saturday sessions that make me feel like I’m trapped in prison person (my approach to college = go to class and do crossword puzzles, or just not go to class at all, then teach myself a semester’s worth of info. before the exam). My aversion to sitting through the class got me thinking about alternatives. Maybe there is an online class? Maybe we can just read some books? Better yet, it’s not like people attended childbirth/newborn classes a hundred years ago (disregard comparative stats on mother and infant mortality rates), so maybe we don’t even need to do much of anything at all? 

As I was sitting at the computer checking out the class options I noticed there was a “condensed” version that was a few hours shorter, so I started looking at what wasn’t covered in the condensed version to see if we could get away with it (I am realizing how horrible this sounds as I am typing it).  One of the topics omitted from the condensed class was “umbilical cord care,” so in an attempt to prove we could just skip that part, I quizzed Tim to see if he knew what an umbilical cord was.  Thankfully, he did. Next I asked him if he knew why we would need to know about umbilical cord care, and here is (roughly) how that conversation went:

T:  “When they cut the cord they tie it off and a small piece is still attached to the baby” (so far so good), “and it takes a few weeks before the piece gets sucked back up into the baby’s stomach.” (crash and burn) 

M:  “Well actually, the cord falls off.”

T:  “Oh yeah that’s right.”

We will be attending the full version of the class.