Simply Amazing

Yesterday I had the nuchal translucency screening done, which also represents my last ultrasound until May 15th. 2 months seems a long time to wait after having 4 scans done in that same amount of time. But we're hoping to hear a heartbeat with doppler at my next OB appointment Monday, and I imagine that sound will help get me through the wait.

Anyhow, the ultrasound was simply amazing. Not only did the baby grow tremendously in the last couple of weeks, Spot was now moving around a ton. S/he kept wiggling, flailing around and waving hello. Jeramy said Spot was rockin' out in my belly and suggested placing headphones on my stomach. After all, he had just read a pregnancy magazine in the lobby stating that babies can hear sound from the womb. Yes, reading material in the waiting area was limited...there was not a single car or tattoo magazine to be found.

Here are a couple of the pics:

Is it me or does my child look a bit like an alien?

At least Spot has cute legs.

Now I consider myself to be pretty patient with our health care system, but admittedly this appointment tested that. It took nearly 2 hours. The first half hour was spent in the waiting room. Then we went back for the ultrasound. That took about 30 minutes, but it would have been much shorted if they had not tried to do it externally first. The images of Spot were just not clear enough that way, so in the end the tech resorted to the ever friendly wand. She then went to get the doctor, which too another 20 minutes as I waited half naked on the table. But it turned out that he just wanted to chat in the consult room, so we were taken there and waited another 15 minutes. Then it turned out that the conversation with the physician was completely unnecessary, so it took about 2 minutes. Oh but there was still blood work to do. So I waited 5 minutes for the vampire who poked me 3 times without getting any blood. She kept swearing that my veins were at fault, but I've had blood drawn 4 times in the last 2 months without problems so I have to wonder if it was just her. Anyhow, we decided to have my OB's vampire do the blood draw on Monday at my next appointment. Oh and did I mention all the women working in this clinic appeared to have graduated in 1988 and never gotten over the big hair phase? If you live around the Seattle area, you'd definitely identify them as "Kent" girls. Thankfully this should be the only time in this pregnancy that I need to go to this clinic.

All I can say is that this really does feel real now. The heartbeat was still going strong at 167 bpm and Spot was measuring a couple days ahead at 12w5d, which corresponds with my IUI date. Perhaps I'm being overly optimistic, but this is starting to feel very real me now. I can actually begin to believe that in 6 months we'll be taking home an actual baby. And I can't begin to describe how wonderful of a feeling that is.