The Sprague Family: Peanut's big photoshoot

Thursday morning, bright and early, we fought the construction and traffic and headed into Oakland to Magee. It was with great anticipation that we wanted to see how big Peanut had grown. I still hold my breath when the scan starts, praying to see that flickering heartbeat. (Some bad habits are hard to break, but I think given past history, this is somewhat understandable.) The ultrasound began with seeing the baby give us the "thumb's up" which made us laugh. Too bad we didn't get a picture of it!

Peanut's heart rate was 136 bpm and after that was assessed, our child decided that s/he'd had enough and proceeded to hide from us as much as possible. (Please - no pictures you paparazzi!) This stubborn child of ours (not quite sure where s/he gets that from - ha ha!) kept turning its back to us and covering its face. Of course, the purpose of this scan is to measure the major bones and view the organs to make sure everything is as it should be. Peanut wasn't going to cooperate willingly, which lead to the tech causing small "earthquakes" on my tummy trying to get the baby to turn over and show arms and face.

A lot of the u/s was the tech zooming in to show us kidneys, bladder, stomach, lenses, and other various things that were fuzzy and not really distinctive to the untrained eye. So we just kind of nodded our heads like "okay - sure!" The end result is that everything is fine and measuring on track. The baby was head down with its feet towards my ribs, facing my back. That of course will change, and probably did as soon as the camera was put away. The placenta is anterior - between my tummy and the baby. This means that I can't feel the baby kicking me since it acts as a big rubber buffer / shock absorber. So it may be another month before I feel Peanut move.

At no point did the tech tell us to look away from the screen so as to not reveal the baby's gender. I guess she saw what she needed to see and was fine with it. We of course didn't see anything, so we asked at the end of the session if the tech knew what the baby's gender was. She said she did, and that was good enough for us. (At 19+ weeks, it's pretty certain if the goods are showing, what the gender is. It's a little earlier where it is a bit more uncertain.)

Here are some pictures of Peanut - probably the last ones well have until s/he is born. Enjoy!

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