Kickin' it

And by "it," I mean me. In the past week or so, Scooter has started giving me some good flying elbows and kicks. Seth has only been able to feel it once, but pretty soon I think he'll be able to feel it more. There's one particular place just above my fast shallowing belly button, where the poor baby would really like to stretch his legs.


Unfortunately, my body seems to be getting in his way a little!

Scooter from the Inside

Ultrasound!!

So on Wednesday at our regular midwife appointment, we asked Deborah about getting an ultrasound. She said she would call the place to give a referral and then we would call to make the appointment. Slight miscommunication, I think, because when we called the ultrasound place this morning at 9:30am they said patients don't schedule appointments and we were already scheduled to come in at 11:30am this morning.

Ok, we panicked a little--Seth, I think, mostly because he was worried that this was the one time that we might find out something was wrong with the baby. Weirdly, I'm not at all worried that anything is wrong. Instead, I was worried that the people at the ultrasound place would be mean or insensitive. We've basically had no contact with the medical establishment this whole time and all our interactions with our midwife are amazingly pleasant and supportive and positive--starting with putting on slippers and ending with hugs, and sometimes you get your feet rubbed a bit in between or she gives you a clementine or tells you your urine is awesome or your abs are wicked strong. Love it.

Ok, sorry for the rambling. We went to the ultrasound place and the people were really nice and the pictures were totally incredible. The doctor said the baby is perfect--has all its organs and limbs, brain, spine, four-chambered heart, all that good stuff. I'll post the pictures in the next post.

We also saw the baby's little feet, with its little toes--easily the cutest thing I've ever seen in my life. And its little legs were kicking like crazy. We think it's true that the baby doesn't like the ultrasound, because near the end when the doctor tried to show us the face one more time, Scooter hid and wouldn't come out. But it was still worth it. The whole thing was one of the best moments of my life.

Heartbeat

Yesterday we heard Scooter's heartbeat for the first time. We could have heard it a while ago using the doppler (a listening device that uses small amounts of ultrasound to pick up sounds too faint to be heard with a traditional stethoscope), but we waited because the midwife told us that sometimes the doppler can disturb the baby. Probably not a big deal, but it didn't seem like a very big deal to hear the heartbeat, either.

Yesterday, Deborah (that's our midwife--more on her in another post!) heard the heartbeat with her fancy stethoscope--it attaches to her head so that she can have her hands free, it's dorky and cute. But it was too faint for us to hear, so we broke down and got out the doppler.

It was pretty awesome to hear the little heartbeat. It was 134 beats per minute, this fast little thumping. And it was sort of like, wow, we made that heart out of nothing all by ourselves. It was the first real connection to the baby in there. Maybe I cried a little.

Getting Bigger

February 17th (18 1/2 weeks):





Maternity clothes are a must. No longer able to camouflage with a combination of cardigan and big fluffy scarf. Though I now know a few good tricks for hiding 15 pounds.






I don't know, though, it could be a little bigger.

My Belly Continued

January 2nd (12 weeks). If you look closely, you can see that my pants don't fit so good anymore. For Christmas my mom took me shopping for my first maternity clothes. My belly may not look impressive here, but trust me, it's huge.











January 30th (16 weeks). The greatest thing about pregnancy is that you get to wear this giant, ugly green sweatshirt and Seth thinks it's cute, right honey?

Scooter from the Outside

Now at 21 weeks, I'm finally starting to show unhideably (if it's not a real word, it should be). But we've been keeping track of my belly (and Seth's) since week one. Unfortunately, they both keep getting bigger. Here are some of our best shots:

November 21st (6 weeks). Nothin' to see here.

December 5th (8 weeks). Sometimes Seth makes me make a funny face.