Baby Week 18 – Ultrasound Update
August 7, 2008
It’s a boy! We had the ultrasound this morning at 8am. The technician this time was absolutely wonderful. After 3 glasses of water from 6:30-7:00, my bladder was pretty full. She took a few shots, and then let me completely empty my bladder (which was so much more pleasant than with Xander’s ultrasound where I could only take out “5 small plastic cups worth of fluid”). Then she got right to work on figuring out the sex, and managed to get a pretty clear shot of his little boy parts. When we got there the little guy had both his arms and legs up over his head – amazing how flexible they are at this stage! He straightened out after a while, and then had a good time kicking me in the bladder for a while. Speaking of which, the technician had me empty my bladder another 4 times during the appointment, and told me that if I need to come back again, I don’t need to worry about the “full bladder” instructions (woo hoo!) So, everything looks good, his heartrate was good, his size was good, and we know the sex. I’m a little bit scared about having 3 boys in the house, but I think we’ll manage somehow 
So this week was the big moment – the sonogram. A few mothers has mentioned that it was somewhat uncomfortable – having a full bladder while someone is pressing on your stomach. I didn’t really give it much thought until the morning when I started sucking down my liter of water. I had to drink 1 liter between 9:30 and 10:00 am, which I did. At 10:02, I needed to pee. Of course, the sonogram wasn’t scheduled for 11:00 am, so I had a while to wait. By the time I got to the radiology waiting room, I was doing the pee-pee dance. When the technician (Toni) finally called me in, I explained that I was pretty certain my bladder was going to explode any minute. Toni let me take out 5 plastic cups full of urine (not an easy task!) I made it through about half the procedure (which ended up taking almost 2 hours!) before my bladder was full again. Toni let me take out another 5 plastic cups of urine (even harder to stop the second time around). The reason I was in there so long was that Toni, and then the doctor on call (Dr. Trent) were unable to catch a picture of all four chambers of the heart – they could get two and two, but not all four. Toni suspects that I will be back again in a few weeks for another try. Since the best they could give us was “maybe a girl?” I guess I won’t complain too much if we have to go back, but I’m not looking forward to filling up my bladder again!
At my doctor appointment this month they started to ask me if I had felt the baby move yet. I wanted to remind both the doctor and nurse who asked me that the baby did have a significant layer of fat to kick through on my stomach, so I’m not really expecting to feel the kid for the next week or two. 16 weeks is generally the earliest one might feel movement. Although I’m not feeling anything yet, the baby is definitely moving. When the nurse put the dopplar on my stomach to listen to the heartbeat, the kid kept moving away from her. She had to chase the kid all around my stomach trying to find a spot where the baby stayed still long enough for us to hear the heartbeat. Eventually she caught up with the baby, and the heartbeat is somewhere in the 140’s, which is apparently still good. We’ve got the sonogram coming up in a few weeks, so hopefully I’ll be able to post a picture of that soon. I’m a bit worried that if the baby won’t cooperate for the dopplar, he or she also won’t cooperate with the sonogram, which could be rather frustrating for us parents who would like to know where it is a he or a she. We’ll keep our fingers crossed that the baby won’t have its legs crossed! 