A Statue Turned its Head

The Bambino is currently trying to kick his or her way out of me through my abdomen, so it's safe to say that he or she is doing well. Feeling someone else moving around in my belly is just about the strangest feeling imaginable. It is reassuring, however. It starts to become a little annoying when it goes on too long, but it's like getting frequent memos saying "hey, I'm still doing okay in here," so it's nice. It also makes things feel more real, like I’m really having a baby, not just getting fat.

The ultrasound (April 9) was great too in the "oh my goodness, there's really a baby in there" sense. It was also good in the everything looks good sense. I didn't really know what to expect other than from when I've seen ultrasounds done on TV where they have the expecting parents staring in awe at the screen while the technician points things out. When we got there, I was a little surprised that they took me right back – no wait, yay – but told M to remain in the waiting room.

I entered the darkened room and lay down on bed/table/whatever type thing. I couldn't see the screen from where I was lying. The warmth of the gel surprised me too; I was expecting it to be cold. Then the technician started moving the ultrasound thing around and staring at the screen. Several minutes passed without her saying anything. The dour expression on her face, coupled with her silence, started to make me a little apprehensive.

Finally, I worked up the nerve to ask her if everything looked okay. She reassured me that it did before returning to her unsmiling examination of the screen. With much relief, I concluded that she must be having a bad day or something as opposed to being unhappy with the contents of her screen.

Ultrasound techs should smile when things are okay. It's really not nice to do that to an expectant mother.

Eventually, she'd looked at everything she needed to look at, so she turned the screen to give me a quick glimpse before leaving to get M. When she returned with him, she showed us the baby's heartbeat and we got to see him/her kick, though I couldn't feel the kicking at the time. Our baby has a very cute back, and we got to see just a tiny glimpse of the side of the face, but unfortunately he/she didn't want to turn over for us, so he/she remains he/she rather than getting a definite pronoun. It appears that we are having modest baby.

It's hard to imagine that my mother's generation didn't get to see any of this. Back then finding out the gender wasn't an option.

It appears that it won't be an option for us either- unless we want to pay for it ourselves, anyway. I'd expected that we'd be able to find out at a later ultrasound, but it's not likely to be. I called my doctor two days after the ultrasound to check the results and she surprised me by saying that since I'd had an ultrasound during the optimum time period (eighteen to twenty weeks – I was just past eighteen when I had mine) and everything looked good (thank goodness) I was unlikely to need another one.

The ultrasound confirmed that I was eighteen weeks along at the time – meaning that I am just a day or two short of twenty-one weeks now. There was a little confusion about my dates before the ultrasound. I'd had my last period starting on Christmas day (it was rather light, but at the time I put that down to stress of travel and changes in diet) which meant that I should only be fifteen weeks or so at the time of the ultrasound. However, I'd started having pregnancy symptoms and gotten the positive test results well before my next period was due. The doctor guessed that I was about three weeks farther ahead of that by uterine size – looks like she was right.

When I first went to the doctor, she made a rough guess of September 10th for an expected due date. When I spoke to her on the phone two days after the ultrasound she said September 10th again, but then when I was in last Friday, she looked at her notes from the ultrasound, turned he due date wheel again (she hadn't written down the due date yet) and said September 11th. Now, that's an ominous due date. She wrote down Sept 11, but I’m still sticking with Sept 10th since that's what I'd already told everyone. Second trimester ultrasounds aren't accurate to the day anyway. Even if they were, it's not as if babies have a habit of arriving on their due date.

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