20 Weeks - Halfway to a baby

While I hate to start a post with an apology, I do have to say I'm sorry for the delay in getting this updated this week...of all weeks! Big News! Last Thursday was the halfway point for me in the pregnancy, 20 weeks, and we had a midwife appointment that went well that day.  My blood pressure remains normal, baby's heart rate is hovering in the mid-150s, and my weight gain has been modest so far, which is all good news.  Not much else to add there, things just keep rolling along normally.

Then on Friday we had our much awaited ultrasound.  Baby is growing right on track and weight is estimated to be about 13 ounces right now.  Our sonographer spent plenty of time checking out each part of baby's development, head to toe.  Every major organ system is looking normal, all structures and bones are growing normally, all fingers and toes seem accounted for.  Femur, humerus, feet and hands are measuring right on track.  There seems to be no evidence of a cleft lip or palate.  Brain development appears normal so far.  The heart appears to be perfect from every angle they could get (which was a lot!).  Little one is stubborn and would.not.move for the longest time for them to get a good peek at the profile, so I was asked to get up and pee, and do a few jumping jacks to get it going! We asked the tech not to tell us the baby's sex, but write it down and we would open it together after the appointment.  After all the measurements were taken, a perinatologist looked them over and then met with us to discuss everything.  By and large, baby looks like a healthy, fabulous little 20 week fetus.  There was one particular measurement which was slightly "abnormal", but they discussed what this might mean, and also that it can be off in the spectrum of typical babies very often as well.  Without getting into too much detail, I will say that although it was a surprise to both of us that we didn't walk away with a "perfect" assessment, there seems to be no real need for concern regarding baby's health or development at this point.  On that note, here are some cute pictures of our little one!

Right Foot 

Left Foot 

I like to call this shot "skeletor" - front view of baby's skull, with a creepish looking hand curled up

Profile, with arm across the top

However, they did discover that I have a total placenta previa, grade 1.  Basically, a little bit of the placenta is implanted covering the cervix.  They felt that this would likely resolve over the next part of the pregnancy, but they want to repeat an ultrasound at 28 weeks to check it again.  If it hasn't moved, we will start discussing what this might mean for the remainder of pregnancy as far as restrictions (i.e bed rest! ugh!) and for delivery.  If it is still there at 32 weeks, they will most likely plan for a c-section.  Not much else to say about that at this point, but hopefully it resolves itself and we won't have to discuss it further!

So, for those of you who haven't already heard, we did find out the sex of the baby. DISCLAIMER - Mark if you are reading this, stop now!!! And for any of you who know Matt's father, please do not tell him! He doesn't want to know, and we will do our best to honor that wish for him.  Anyway, the tech was quite sure he saw what he needed to see (I'm pretty sure I saw it when he did too).  He wrote the sex down and we decided to go to the Michigan Theater and open the envelope on the landing where we got married.  It was really sweet, and totally Matt's idea.  It was a perfect way to find out that we are going to have a daughter! It's a girl :) Neither of us were surprised to see that word written on the paper, but it was so wonderful to know that we can now start calling baby "her" and thinking of names.  No, we don't have any front runners yet, and I think we might keep that little part a secret until the end when we do!


I know this post is getting super long, but I wanted to end with a belly pic from 20 weeks.  Halfway - think it's half as big as it's going to get? Haha, yeah right! I look like I could use a good nap here. Hope 21 weeks photographs better.  I'm wishing I was a bit more creative with my weekly shots, but I guess there's still some time left.