IT'S A BOY!!

Well we finally had an ultrasound where "Peanut" wanted to show off the goods!  It was scheduled for 4pm today but I got a call around noon asking if I could be there at 2 instead... but my mother had gone on a 45 minute walk without her cell phone (and needless to say, I was panicking!) so we got to find out sooner than originally planned!  This time, baby didn't want to stop showing anything but the goods and it took us a while to get a picture of his face.

At 18 weeks, he's the size of a sweet potato (and much cuter than this picture!) and weighed in at 9 ounces - which is a little big, but still in the normal range and will come in very handy if they actually do induce me 3 weeks early as projected (only 132 more days!).  The doctor and sonographer both said that everything looks fantastic (good to know with Nate's history of kidney problems) and that our little man is measuring beautifully - and going to be a big boy! 

Unfortunately, this means that as quickly as Baby is growing, Mommy is starting to expand quite rapidly too!

This is just before we hit the 17 week mark.

This is right at 18 weeks.

And this was today after the ultrasound (18 weeks 2 days) where I'm up 5.6 pounds, 2 bra sizes, and starting to be uncomfortable in my "normal" clothes.

So, now onto the baby's pictures, since I'm sure that's what you're most interested in anyhow!  Some of the images are kinda blob-y and they aren't the best quality since they're uploaded from cell phone shots of the ultrasound pictures, but you'll get the point...

 This is the left side of his face; you can see the outline of his eye socket, his nose, and his lips, along with the definition of his chin.

 This is what the sonographer called "The Terminator": The pointy bit off to the left is the knee pulled up, the gray matter at the bottom is his belly, and the round bit in the middle of the image is his face, straight on, with no features (well, I guess, you can slightly make out his nasal socket-the dark sideways triangle) but the circular thing at the top is the baby's retina!

 This is a picture of his arm and hand in a semi-fist pose.

 They had just made me drink a can of ice-cold Coke in an attempt to get him to stop standing on his head and allow us to get a picture of his face, so I'm thinking in this picture, he's got his fist to his forehead in a "brain freeze!" motion.

 This is the 3D version of the up-the-butt shot, though it's hard to define what's uterus, legs, and "boy parts" but if you get creative, I'm sure you can manage (oh, how he'll hate me for this when he's a teenager!).

 This one (as you can tell by the description in the bottom left corner) is a picture of the bottom of his (VERY LARGE) foot.

 This is a profile picture with him bringing his hand up towards his mouth, right before he stuck the thumb in the mouth.

 Imagine a grumpy old man face... that's what this is. Left side profile, but he's scrunching up his lips/chin.

 "I'M A BOY"

 Profile picture, not quite as clear as others, but the incredibly white part is his chin (left), nose (pointing up in the middle), and forehead (sloping to the right).

 Another left side of the face (wow, these kinda look like aliens, but it's incredible the things they can see on these scans nowadays!) with his fist kinda tucked up near his chin.

 And another shot of his boy parts.

 And yet another "winky" shot!

This is my favorite picture we got today... profile with his legs and arms tucked up near his tummy and his little chin lifted off his chest - great shot of the shape of his face!

14 weeks-17 weeks

At 14 weeks, "baby" is the size of a lemon (or my clenched fist) and is busy wiggling and sucking on fingers and toes, developing the spleen, kidneys and liver. A downy hair called lanugo is there to keep "baby" from getting cold... hopefully it'll be shed before the (early) delivery so I'm not having a baby monkey!

Depending on your stance of old wive's tales, below are some up-to-date belly pictures.

I'm not really showing from the front or back (which suggests boy), but my hair and skin don't have the coveted "glow" (which suggests girl). I've had very little morning sickness (which suggests boy), but the heartbeat is higher than 140 (which suggests girl).  Well, the ultrasound didn't go exactly as planned. Baby was wiggling all over the place while we sat in the waiting room, worked through the lab tests, and talked to the doctor. As soon as we moved into the ultrasound room and turned the machine on him/her, the baby crossed his/her legs, stuck the thumb in the mouth and went to sleep! Couldn't get him/her to move at all to show us the goodies! :(

At 15 weeks, we had to have some blood drawn for the second part of the integrated screening. I hadn't been feeling baby moving around as much, so I asked the nurse to listen for his/her heartbeat - simple right? Nope! This baby did NOT want to hold still long enough to register a heartbeat! We sat there for about 30+ minutes and only got a blip that registered at 152... heartbeat is starting to slow down... wonder what that means? 

This week, "Baby" is the size of a large navel orange. His/her legs finally are longer than the arms and all of the joints are working.

At week 16, baby is now the size of an avocado. His/her eyebrows, lashes, and hair are starting to fill in; taste buds are forming, and the bones in his/her ears are developing - so (s)he can hear us talking/singing, etc!

I ordered our first batch of baby shower invitations. Mommy is throwing the shower in late October (plenty of time in case little "Peanut" decides to come super early) and in an attempt to help her out, I've started looking into invitations/decorations, etc. Plus, I figured it was probably time to start thinking about a name for our potential daughter. Nate and I have an agreement that if it's a boy, he gets to choose the name, but if it's a girl, I get to choose the name. This is one of those things that most girls think about from the time they're little, right? Well, I've had 3 girl's names picked out since I was about 12: Hayley Marie (the niece of a friend), Marissa Elise (too close to Alyssa-our oldest-and Melissa-Nate's ex), and Kylie Jeanne (which I couldn't stand to reuse). Now, I figured that if I needed more than 3 girl names, I was getting my tubes tied (lol) since I wanted 4 boys... but this has left me stuck!  We have/had another appointment set for right after 17 weeks, so the pressure's definitely on. I went through 4,000+ names, narrowed it down to about 25, read some more, added about 15 more, and finally narrowed it down to THE NAME the night before the ultrasound that would (hopefully) tell us the gender of our little "Peanut!"

17 Weeks, baby is the size of an onion (eeeeyeuw!) with cartilage turning to bone, baby fat accumulating, and the awesome development of fingerprints!

When we showed up for our ultrasound, the nurse (who would do an ultrasound every day if I wanted her to) that we love wasn't there and we were seeing a doctor who had been out on maternity leave for quite a while. We told her that Tina was going to do an ultrasound for us, but the doctor didn't seem to care at all! She asked if we had an anatomy scan scheduled (yes, it's next week), took the heartbeat (143!) and said that she didn't expect to see anything but that she'd take a quick look... and quick it was! She spent about a minute waving the wand over my belly, watching little "Peanut" pummeling my insides and trying to decipher the grainy images (their machine is very old and only used for glimpses at baby, nothing too detailed) and then quit!

We're pretty sure we saw enough to know the "plumbing" (ie indoor vs outdoor) but we're going to wait until next week's super awesome anatomy ultrasound to announce - just in case!