What's Up, Doc?

Our second visit to the clinic was on Thursday, December 28. The agenda for this visit was to get a routine exam and, hopefully, hear the baby's heartbeat. We finally got to meet Mari Slape, our nurse midwife, who will be conducting all of my exams and, if all goes as planned, delivering the baby.

She asked a couple of basic questions and then we discussed due dates. Since our first visit, we knew there was a discrepancy between when we thought the date was and that which the clinic had calculated. Mari suggested we do a quick ultrasound to determine a more accurate date, to which we responded with an emphatic, "Let's do tha dang thing."

In less than two seconds she had slopped that cold goop all over my bulging gut, stuck that ultrasound gadget right into it, and a fuzzy picture of my insides appeared on the screen next to my head. She moved it around a bit until she focused on the little creature that was taking a nap on top of my bladder. I looked at Timothy, and he at me, and it was at that moment we realized...

We were going to have an alien.

Not really. At least I hope not. But it was quite odd to see a weird little body that was residing amongst my organs. With Mari's help, we could sort of make out the head with a piggish little face, some bony, armlike protuberances, teeny feet and toes, and most importantly, a strongly beating heart that helped put the rest of the body into perspective.

It's funny, I really expected to have a much more emotional reaction to seeing our baby for the first time. Not that there was no emotional impact - I definitely felt my heart racing with excitement and felt great joy to see that our little guy (or girl) was living and growing. But I guess the surreality of it has not worn off yet, so the inner scientist in me took over and I was just fascinated by the notion that my body could grow another little body inside of it. We could even see it moving around, stretching a bit, getting comfy on its bladder pillow. Mari measured the head and the body, which came in at 6.8cm long (around 2.5inches), indicating a due date somewhere around the 2nd or 4th of July. With such a small difference from the original date, she decided that June 30th (mom's birthday!) was close enough.

She completed the physical exams, said that I was the size and weight I should be (I had gained 3 pounds since my first visit), and sent us home with some ultrasound pics. All in all a really good visit.