Iowa Trip and Doctor's Appointment

We got back from a wonderful belated Christmas vacation to Iowa on Tuesday. We had such a great time there; very relaxing which was EXACTLY what we needed. We stayed with my parents and got in lots of card and Rummikub playing, some movies, several nice long walks in the country, Christmas celebrations with both my parents and the Abrams side of the family, and great conversation. Oh and some snow! It snowed 3 times while we were there, which was really fun to see since it's more of a novelty to me after living in places where it doesn't snow much for the past 8 years. I just want to say how really great it was to see my wonderful family while I was back. It was so good to catch up with my cousins and their beautiful kids and my aunt and uncles and all of the Abrams. Thanks to Mom and Janise for putting together a great day and to everyone for coming! It means so much to me to get to see you all when we're back in Iowa. :):):) I wasn't ready to come home by the time our vacation was over but it helps that Mom will be coming out to visit at the end of February, only a month from now:) Yay!

The day after we got back, we had our 2nd Doctor's appointment. I thought I was slated for an ultrasound but as it turned out, I wasn't. During the appointment our doctor was unable to detect the fetal heartbeat so she sent us over to the hospital for an ultrasound anyway. It gave us a little scare, but I really felt like everything was okay and didn't (luckily) have much time to think about it since she sent us over to get the ultrasound the same day. The ultrasound showed a strong heartbeat and everything else to be great. Baby is doing well! It was a really neat ultrasound because the baby was extremely active and moving his arms and legs (2 arms, 2 legs:) around and jumping all over. The sonographer said that at this age, babies end up flailing a lot due to lack of muscle control. It was very exciting to see our baby flail! I couldn't believe that he is moving around so much and I can't feel a thing:) The other big news is....we still don't know for sure if the baby is a boy or a girl. Although, there appears to be a little penis at this point, the sonographer wouldn't give us more than a 51% chance in favor of a boy:) He said he wasn't a betting man and didn't want us to go home and paint our nursery blue if he was wrong. We have another ultrasound in about a month so we'll find out for sure then. Below are some pictures which definitely need descriptions. It's a little hard to tell what's what if you don't have someone telling you what you're looking at.

This is a side profile from the waist up. You can see the baby's left arm, which he is holding up to his head. The bright white areas are the bones so if you look close you can make out the skull and lower down you can see the rib cage.

This is another side profile. The baby's head is at the right of the picture. You can see his forehead and nose in the profile. The bright white line at the bottom of the picture is the baby's spine. The legs aren't showing in this picture so it looks a little odd. They would be at the left of the picture. He does have legs! They just aren't showing.

This one is really cryptic, but it's the baby's face from a front view. It looks really skeletal in this picture but if you look close you can make out two eyes and the nose. You can also see where his arms are protruding, although you can't see the entire arms in this picture.

In this picture the sonographer was trying specifically to zoom in on the baby's boy or girl parts. The baby is lying on his back and the picture shows what "appears" to be a bitty boy part. I asked my friend Susie (mother of a teenage boy) if it was too embarrassing for our baby to post this to which she said. "Embarrassing? Not for a boy! They're so proud of those things - always happy to have an audience!!!" Thanks for putting that into perspective for me:)