Falling In Love Again

I had an ultrasound on Sunday.  Here’s a picture of my latest love.  (This is a profile.  The head is on the right.  The baby is face-up.)

Our pastor’s daughter is a good friend of ours.  She works at St. Jude’s as an ultrasound tech.  She’s leaving on Saturday for a medical missions trip to El Salvador and has a portable ultrasound on-loan for that trip.  She’ll be doing primarily OB ultrasounds while in El Salvador and wanted someone to practice on before the trip so that she could get used to the portable machine.  It just so happens that we were willing “guinea pigs.”  And Pastor Jeff was kind enough to let us use his office.

Claire, of course, had to be up in the middle of it all.  (Me, Claire and Patti – Steve took the pictures.)

The baby is now lying face-down.  You can see the spine at the top.  The head is on the right.

We were unable to determine if the baby is a girl or a boy.  (It’s still a little early.)  The baby was very wiggly and kept crossing its legs.  (For my brother, Matt – I asked for a gender prediction based on the heartbeat.  Patti said she doesn’t believe any of that, so she doesn’t know what the threshold is.  However, Pastor Jeff came in during the ultrasound; and he said that if the heartbeat sounded like the hoof beats of a horse, it’s a boy.  If the heartbeat sounded like drops of water in a bucket, it’s a girl.  He said that he heard hoof beats.  Patti told him she thought it was all hogwash.  The Chinese Gender Predictor says it’s a girl.  We’ll just have to wait a little longer to find out.)

We’re having another ultrasound Thursday night.  I’ll post more pictures this weekend.

Additionally, we were able to determine that the heart and lungs look good.  The kidneys are functioning properly.  The brain looks good.  Every single part is formed perfectly.  Our baby is healthy and growing.

All three of us (Claire included) are so in love with this baby.  We’re really looking forward to finding out if we’re having a boy or a girl so that we can start preparing for his or her arrival.