I KNEW it!

Mothers are always right. Remember way back (six whole weeks ago) when we went for our first ultrasound and the tech determined the age of the baby was 7 weeks 3 days? Remember how I insisted that the baby was actually 8 weeks old? Well, I was RIGHT! Today's ultrasound revealed the true age of the baby to be 13 weeks 1 day, meaning the first ultrasound was off by 5 days, making me right on the money. And five days is not a little bit of time in the life of a fetus.

So, I went today for the Nuchal Translucency scan at Hack. After, of course, doing just enough research on Down Syndrome and the other trisomies (not to mention Autism, for which you can't even test until the kid is like, a toddler) to get myself worked up into a mild frenzy. Luckily I had to drive myself (I really need to concentrate hard when I don't know where I'm going) and also there wasn't a whole lot of time in the waiting room, so I didn't get to think too much about it beforehand. Thank goodness.

It was my first time at the hospital and what I saw of it looked pretty nice. I wish I'd gotten the chance to look around more. The ultrasound tech was very sweet and very enthusiastic, which is fantastic considering that she takes pictures of strangers' fetuses day in and day out. She still managed to make my experience seem special. Or maybe our kid really is more impressive than others already. Hmmm...

Anyway, I walked in (Papouism) and laid down on the table, and she applied the gel and the ultrasound apparatus to my stomach, and even though I fully knew what to expect, I can't even describe the thrill I felt when the fuzzy, rolling landscape on the little black and white screen suddenly morphed into a dark, kidney shaped hollow with an actual baby floating in it! We've seen pictures of our neighbor's scans (see link at right to 'the 'cawens') and seen countless pictures in books and online of what ultrasounds at 12-14 weeks look like, and I was fully prepared and really excited to see something that resembled a human--leaps and bounds from the Lil' Bean of week 7 (week 8, ha-HAH!). But nothing could have prepared me for the actual experience of it. Even though my little book says the baby is constantly moving, and that, "using the wall of the uterus as a springboard, he leaps up and down," I guess I didn't quite grasp the...I don't know...literal-ness (literality? hehe) of that statement. As in, when you see the ultrasound of your baby, it won't just be a still, silent portrait. It will show him twisting and turning, jumping, flexing his legs, reaching with his arms... Babies aren't asleep all the time in there, even though it is small and quiet and dark and really, really comfy. Seems silly that I didn't put the two together.

Or maybe I did, logically, but the reality is something all together different and totally visceral. Our baby really was jumping. It almost looked like hiccups because his little legs are so short in comparison to the rest of his body, but when the legs came into focus it was clear that they were bending and flexing and pushing off, and then his little head was hitting the top of the womb, sending him back to the bottom again. He was reaching his arms over his head, then putting his fingers in his mouth, then throwing the back of his hand against his forehead in despair (it's tough in there, I tell you!). He kicked his legs all way out in front of himself, and then tucked them back underneath, crossed at the ankles, and rubbed them together like my dad does when he's sleeping. When the tech moved around to get a shot of the "lower extremities," there was a moment when the plane in focus showed just his feet--perfect little soles with teeny, tiny toes! The tech was trying to get a clear profile picture for Sean since he wasn't able to be there, but every time that little face would come into focus, he'd just as quickly squirm and twist and wriggle around. The tech jiggled my belly pretty hard over and over and over, trying to get him to flip over when he faced away. I turned to one side, and then the other, hoping he would flip around too, then finally she tilted the top of the table back so that my feet were higher than my head, and he stopped. Maybe it was just the strange orientation--I don't think there have been many instances since I've been pregnant when my feet have been higher than my head (except for at Pilates), but whatever it was, it worked. He relaxed and she got this fabulous shot, and I heard the heartbeat again: 162 beats per minute, very loud and very strong.

Lest all you who voted "girl" get your panties in a bunch, I'm just calling the baby "he" today because that's what the techs do before the sex is determined (and because, frankly, "it" is getting tiresome). Last week I was saying "she." I'm not committing just yet, and we won't know for sure for another five or six weeks.