Adventures in Baby Production!

Ha! It sounds like the title of my post is referring to some sort of assembly line, which actually might be a fit way of describing what’s going on inside my body right now.

It’s been a while since a preggo update, so here we go (these are in no particular order):

I am 18 weeks 2 days as of right now. According to the doctor’s scale yesterday I’ve gained about 1.5 – 2 pounds since I got pregnant. Maybe it’s because I was ten pounds overweight to start with, or perhaps because I had zero appetite for the first trimester, but that seems on the low end of things.

Despite having not really gained any weight, I do have a pretty round belly, though the nurse told me yesterday that I was “so tiny” about eight times. All I’m saying is, if she thinks I’m tiny, she must be seeing some big’uns.

Also, yesterday we had not one, but two ultrasounds! Why, you might ask? Diabetic women have higher risk of having babies with heart defects, so I had one ultrasound just of the baby’s heart, and then the standard 18 week big ultrasound. They were back to back, which was sort of fun, but also made my neck hurt from spending well over an hour craning to see the screen.

The results? The cardiologist said the baby’s heart is *perfect* and that she didn’t feel that she needed to see me again, unless a problem cropped up later. It was also really cool to have her explain all the parts of the baby’s heart and see it pumping away from up close.

On we went to the second ultrasound, at our OB-GYN’s office. They measured the head, the limbs, across the body, etc. The baby is measuring to within ONE DAY of the date of conception I gave them in the first appointment (HA – take that anyone who thinks NFP is unreliable!). The baby is right smack in the middle of development for 18 weeks. Needless to say, I breathed a large sigh of relief. Everything is going normally and well — praise be to God!

At the first ultrasound, I told the doctor that we were interested in knowing the baby’s gender, and she said, “I’ll take a look.” She looked around, and made her pronouncement. Then when we went to the second ultrasound, that tech also “took a look” and told us what she thought the baby’s gender was too.

I guess we’re lucky that we got “a second opinion” on our ultrasound, especially since both opinions agreed with each other! I had a feeling that the baby is a girl. Eric didn’t have any particular feeling one way or the other. We took the “Old Wives’ Tales” quiz that’s supposed to predict the baby’s gender, and it told us we had a 77% chance of having a girl.

So when our little baby did a completely unabashed spread eagle during the second ultrasound, and we saw the lack of — anything — the tech typed onto the screen “I’m a GIRL!“ and we knew she was right!

We’re going to have a GIRL!!!!!

So of course, we had to do something to celebrate after the appointment, so we went to the nearby Catholic book store and bought a couple of cute books for our daughter (so cool to be able to say that!).

(1) Angel in the Waters by Regina Doman. This is such a sweet little book for not just babies, but for parents too! It’s told from the point of view of the baby inside the womb, where he/she is accompanied by a guardian angel. I choked up reading it in the store; we just had to get it!

(2) My First Prayers — published by St. Joseph picture books. It’s got all the basics, sign of the cross, morning prayer, glory be, our father, hail mary, and some really great other small prayers. I know she won’t be actually reading it herself for quite a while, but it has a lot of pictures, and will be great for teaching those prayers. Best part? It was $1.50.

(3) Book of Saints Part 1 – by Fr. Lovasik. I actually had the same book as a child! It has 15 one page profiles of various saints with great pictures. There are about 15 parts in the series. Also was $1.50. I’d imagine we’ll probably buy them all eventually.

And last, but not least in the dispatches from baby-land, I’m beginning my investigations of nursery decoration ideas. Any suggestions are welcome. We have a room painted light yellow, and we aren’t planning to paint the whole thing over (though a border could be possible).

I hope you’re all having a blessed week!