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February 15, 2005
Ultrasound
So today we went for our ultrasound. I cheated and didn't drink all of my fluids, but I got most of the way through. I also didn't start until later than that 45 minutes (okay, only 5 minutes later) before the appointment than they said, and spaced it out over the drive over there. A good thing too because had I started on time and drunk everything then and there, my bladder would have probably exploded already, as they didn't see us immediately (you'd think they'd consider the fact that there's a pregnant woman with a full bladder...).
Our ultrasound tech was this small Indian lady, she was definitely not much over 5 foot. She explained how she'd been doing this for 20 years now, and I think she'd started off doing it in India and such. She was a lovely lady, a little hard sometimes to understand because of the accent, so I think I missed parts of her banter. She really amused me because I think she was almost more excited than we were. It was quite adorable, and it was nice to see that someone loves their job even after doing it for 2 decades. When I told her that we didn't want to find out she was saying she had 2 kids, and she never found out either, because she just loved surprises.
After checking out my cervix and some other basic stuff like the placenta, she let me go to the bathroom, because at 19 weeks the baby was big enough to be easily seen without the bladders needing to buoy the uterus upwards. And thank $deity for that! My cervix is fine, ditto the placenta which is also happily situated well away from the cervix, so no potential problems there (like placenta previa). The placenta is posterior, so on the back side of my uterus, towards my spine.
Our tech took a load of pictures, looking at everything from the spine to the brain to the kidneys to the heart to the cord, and she measured the thighbone length and head circumference and a couple of other things. Everything was great, and the baby's head measured exactly 19 weeks, (which I was, to the day) so my due date is on the nose as well, and we're still on for July 11th.
It was really interesting, obviously, to be able to see our baby. Also very interesting was just seeing how much they move, even when you don't feel anything. I've been feeling kicks or punches or something of that ilk for the last week and a half or so, busy patches every once in a while but other than that not much, and you just don't really consider that they're constantly doing stuff. Well, watching this little tyke for a while, you do realise... they're in motion almost constantly. And not just various head, arm and leg movements, but flipping the other way around, upside down, happily being all acrobatic in the amniotic fluid. It's like having a little Cirque du Soleil acrobat in utero.
So that was a very cool and amazing experience.
Midwife's visit tomorrow. Hopefully PreZ will feel well enough to come with me. He's feeling better tonight (after some meds and an afternoon nap) than he did before, so maybe in the morning he'll be well enough to come along.
Pictures over in the Gallery section.
Posted on 02:17 AM to: Pregnancy