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!
No comments:
Post a Comment