For Those of You Who Wanted a Bump Picture.

I've finally started gaining weight, which is a relief after the nausea. Baby Peter is growing, as is my middle. Goodbye waist, hello baby!

p.s. In case you can't read the label that is sparkling apple cider. 

September 26th - I Made It To An Appointment!

This appointment is the most exciting, so I'm glad that I could actually be there (this is Devin, if you didn't pick up on that). Aside from the general check-up, we would find out whether we were having a boy or a girl!

And, after a lot of looking, it sure looked like a boy.

It's fun for me, knowing that we'll have a son. Makes it very real. I'm so grateful to Martha, too, for everything that she's going through for us to have a kid. I just get to go along for the ride!

He likes to play with his face.

August 10th - Second Appointment and Second Ultrasound

So this appointment was a bit of a surprise. They called it an "early screening test" which I thought was a different kind of test than it was. It ended up being a test for chromosomal abnormalities, including Down Syndrome Trisomy-21 and Trisomy-18. I forgot that I had opted to have this test in the first appointment. It's a fairly simple test, they draw some blood to test, and then look at the baby in the ultrasound. From what I remember the Tech saying they're looking to measure the size of a bubble of some kind in the baby's spine, if the bubble is a certain size then the baby is more likely to have a chromosomal abnormality. They also look to see if the nose bone is developing, this can also be a risk factor. They then combine the results of the ultrasound with the blood work and let you know the chances of the baby having the abnormality. When the results came back, they were... negative. The baby has less than a .1% chance of having the abnormality. 

I loved getting to have a few more pictures of the baby and durring the ultrasound it was dancing... literally hopping around and putting it's hands up by it's face. It made me feel so much more like he's a real person that moves and touches and in general is his own little self. 

The sad part about this appointment is.... Devin wasn't there. It totally wasn't his fault, I didn't realize that this appointment would include an ultrasound, so he drove me there and dropped me off, but by the time we realized the mistake it was too late for him to get back in time. I felt so bad that he had to miss this ultrasound too. Sorry Deivn... I love you! 

Here are the pictures from the ultrasound. In these first two you can see the bubble in the back of the neck. and you can see some of the features of the face. 

In this one you can see his leg kicked up, that's because he was dancing and moving so much. This picture caught him in the act. You can also see his left hand up by his face. I wonder if he'll be left handed like his daddy. 

July 23, 2012 - First Appointment and First Ultrasound

This Appointment was a bit nerve-racking for me. Devin was in China and I was all alone going in, and I didn't know so much what to think. I should mention here that Devin had booked his flight to China prior to when we found out we were having a baby, so it clearly wasn't his fault that he missed this. He also sent me these flowers on the day of the appointment (what a sweetheart).

So this appointment was fairly long, the doctor and nurses at MGH asked a lot of questions. And I got to make a lot of choices. Like if I wanted to be tested for Cystic Fibrosis (I'm not a carrier btw) and if I wanted to do testing to see if the baby had a chromosomal disorder. I opted for both.

Then I got to have a full exam from my very nice doctor, and as part of that exam they used this fancy tool to try and hear the heartbeat of the baby. They looked and looked... and they couldn't find it. So that made me  a little nervous. So they decided to have me got get an Ultrasound to be able to see the heart beat and try to figure out how old the baby is. Here are the pictures! At this point the baby really wasn't much more than just a little blob with another blob on it that looks like a head. But we could see the heartbeat. The tech guessed at this point that the baby was about 9 weeks along (I don't think that's right and I'll probably spend another post explaining why). It was one of the most exciting days of my life. I knew for sure that I was really pregnant and that we were really going to have a baby! Sometimes I still can't believe it!