Growing, Growing, Growing... But Baby is Still Smooshed

I can't believe how large I'm getting. Tonight I was using a restaurant bathroom with a very large mirror, and a Janet Jackson song was playing over the loudspeakers, and so I wiggled a little bit to the music while I washed my hands. And I realized that I looked absolutely, 100% ridiculous dancing.

Then I fell off the couch when I reached for my drink on the coffee table. The belly weight pulled me right off!

Yesterday we had another sonogram, and this time the photos came in 3-D. The technology isn't perfect, and some of the pictures looked a bit weird, but there is one certainty: the baby is squished. Every photograph of the face shows 1. the baby has Dave's lips, 2. the baby has my nose, and 3. the baby's face is completely smooshed, like it's looking through a window and making faces. I can't help but feel bad for the littlest Reckess. But baby will be out soon (5 weeks til our due date) and will be able to stretch its face as much as it wants.

Synagogue Singing and Holiday Cheer

We hope people are enjoying their holidays, especially if it includes a little time off work - Dave and I are visiting my Grandma Joan in Colorado, but the internet connection is spotty, so this might be our only post until after the New Year. We're excited for 2008; 2007 was a spectacular year for the Cumbie Reckess house, and so far 2008 is on tap to be even better!

Last Friday evening, Dave, Azzy, Paula and I attended synagogue services at Temple Beth Shalom, where Dave and I are members. It was the first time we've been to synagogue since the baby can "hear" outside noises - and wow! As soon as we began singing, the baby had a party. Approximately 50 people were in attendance, and some of us are louder singers than others (Azzy and I seem to have cornered that market), and with each song, the baby rolled. Dave had read in the baby book that sometimes fetuses are startled by sudden sounds, but the baby didn't seem to be startled at all - more like lulled. Of course, there is quite a difference between a synagogue service and an Ozzy Ozbourne concert, so perhaps lullabyes at services don't startle as much as Crazy Train. Regardless, I couldn't help but feel very pleased that the baby enjoyed my Hebrew, even if I always seem to be a couple of syllables behind everyone else.

I do have to add a second part to this story, though, which was that earlier on Friday I was driving alone, and the song Hey Ya by Outkast came on, to which the baby also responded very postitively. So it appears that our fetus enjoys both a beautiful Friday night service AND hip hop. Maybe we should try an opera?

A Recap of our 20 week sonogram

Last Friday you'd have thought Dave and I were sharing a birthday. I couldn't sleep, I was so excited to meet our little one visually again. We even arrived at the doctor's office 15 minutes early, then sat there and perused all the baby magazines, which we generally make fun of, but this time, we were just a tad more serious.

The tech led us back to the sonogram room, and lo and behold, the very first thing that happened was the tech put her wand up to my belly and the baby kicked for the very first time - kicked the wand, that is. The tech jumped back and said, "Whoa! I guess this baby doesn't want to be disturbed today!" Too bad, little one. We were coming in.

First image we saw: the thumbs up sign. (See bottom photo - the tech labeled it) Click on pictures to make them bigger.

The photo on the top is a profile, baby's head at the right-side and baby's belly on the left. All the black space is amniotic fluid.

Based on all the calculations she added up (length of the baby's femur, circumference of the head, etc) the baby weighed in at 15 oz (almost a whole pound of baby inside me!) and 7 inches long. In fact, baby's size is equal to an average 21.5 week-old, not a 20 week old. Dave and I have thought for some time that we were a little ahead of the due date, and this just proved it. This doesn't mean that the doctors will change the due date, however; we'll have to wait until we're farther into the 3rd trimester for that.

Some highlights of the sonogram: measuring the four chambers of the heart, which are almost evenly divided by a cross, seeing that the baby's stomach was full from our breakfast, observing the baby flex his/her fingers and pulling on his/her ear, observing the baby open his/her mouth VERY wide (like a yawn, only bigger), and while measuring the foot, seeing five perfectly square toes. The tech asked who in our family has square toes, and the answer is, my mom! The first family-likeness comes in the form of square toes; how funny is that?

Our 20-Week Sonogram

Tomorrow morning, Dave and I have our 20-week anatomy sonogram. The baby's body will be mapped - the direction of the blood vessels, the stomach, the chambers of the heart, toes and fingers, width of the spine, length from head to toe... it's like our own little biology lesson growing inside my body! We're excited to visually meet the baby again, to hear the heartbeat, to see the face. At our 12-week sonogram, the baby was waving arms and running in place - what will tomorrow have in store???

A Wave from Inside

Today Dave and I had our second sonogram. The first sonogram occurred at 7 weeks, and we saw a little peanut the size of a grain of rice with a steady heartbeat of 152 bpm.

So today I wasn't sure what to expect- and WOW did we see a lot. A little, mostly-formed growing being, with a discernible nose, upper and lower mandible, lips, ears... the works. Dave couldn't close his mouth - he was dumbfounded. Heartbeat 164 bpm. (No sex, yet. So don't ask)

The purpose of the sonogram was to measure the length of the body, the width of the spinal column, the bridge of the nose... to count all limbs (two of each, whew) and identify the stomach and bladder. The baby's head takes up most of its size right now, and it has no shoulders but a large paunchy belly (like me!). And the heart, which we could see beating on the screen, was HUGE in comparison to the stomach. Then we looked at the top of the baby's head and could actually see the two chambers of the brain, which the tech also measured.

And here was the best part-the technician (who has the coolest job ever - I'm jealous) couldn't get a good measurement for a while because the baby REFUSED to stop moving. It was like a bucking bronco, really. It was flipping from its back to its side, and she kept talking to it, saying, "Ok, now, just one second so I can snap a picture!" and then it would roll around. She said that some babies just lie there and don't do much, but ours was incredibly active. And then the best best part happened...

The baby started fluttering its arms, waving at us (or waving us away? "Get out of my house!" I think it said)! And we counted five little fingers. And then the tech decided to take other measurements (length of the fetus - 6cm - size of a lime) and we could see the little feet and legs, and they were swimming! Dog-paddling, actually. Then she returned to the top of the body, and we saw the baby put its hand to its forehead, like, "Please, people, leave me alone," and then the other arm started moving. Dave and I drove to the appointment this morning listening to a CD we just made for Dina (congrats on passing the FL bar!) and I am positive it was the upbeat music that woke the baby up for our appointment.

We have pictures of all this, but the process of watching it together on the monitor is 100 times cooler than the fuzzy pictures wherein we have to explain in detail what the viewer is actually looking at.

The baby's bones haven't calcified yet, so when it moves around, I can't feel anything, but soon, soon, soon! And then I will wish it slept more and stopped doing flips, I'm sure. Right now, though, it is AMAZING to think that although I can't feel anything, there's a lot of activity going on.

The one part that made me really sad is that there are still a lot of women in this country who don't get adequate (or any) prenatal care, and I think they miss out on some amazing bonding with their fetus as well as health care. It's one thing to feel sick and tired and emotional; it's another to have the opportunity to eyeball the responsible party and realize, "Hey! I'm growing a PERSON!" Especially since today's sonogram enforced the idea that this little person is a separate entity, all by itself, and although it depends on my body for a lot, it is growing and developing all on its own in a small little cavity (uterus). It's not an extension of me - it's going to be a self-supporting person in 6 short months! And that in itself is why the sonogram is so important - and scary. Dave said to me soon after we left the office, "It's amazing to see the baby as its own person. It's a whole 'nother person we'll have to take care of!" Suddenly we realized - what in the world have we gotten ourselves into???

10 Weeks and Counting

Today we are at 10 weeks, which is a very important milestone in the pregnancy. The peanut inside has graduated from embryo to fetus, which means that all the organs are present and accounted for. This also means that the fingerprints have formed, the eye color has developed (even though the pigmentation is incomplete and doesn't form until after birth), and that the reproductive organs are present but indiscernible. Unbelievable! It also means that this week or next, the placenta begins to function.
I was going to include a photo of fetal development, but at this point, it looks so... alien, that I think I'll just let it be. If you're interested, though, go to http://www.pregnancy.org and click on Fetal Development First Trimester.