It's really in there!

Yesterday Ryan and I had our 3rd appointment with the midwife. I gained almost 5 lbs in the past month, and while my blood pressure was a bit higher than it usually is everything fell into the "normal pregnancy" range. After talking with the midwife about some of my question (and Ryan sat quietly and listened), I laid down on the exam table so we could hear our baby's heartbeat with the doppler again. Except our baby just didn't want to be bothered. The midwife searched and searched for the heartbeat with TWO doppler machines for a very long time, and while we could hear the little one moving around in there we only caught VERY VERY short blips of the heartbeat.

So then the midwife asks a very interesting question. "Do you mind if I get the ultrasound machine?" What, are you kidding? I would love for you to get the ultrasound machine! So she wheels in the old ultrasound machine that the ultrasound department "rejected" when they got an upgrade. She sets it up, and Ryan comes around beside me to see the monitor. In no time at all, we see baby...the whole baby! Not weird alien looking thing or blob or anything like that. This is a baby with a big head and little arms with fingers (balled up into fists and punching, like it was trying to make sure that doppler thing didn't come back poking around) and little legs all stretched out and pushing on the edge of the uterus. I think I just kept repeating "This is crazy!" I think I still had doubts that there was actually a baby in my barely-there tummy. But no, it's really in there! And actually seeing it moving on the screen was cooler and more real than any still ultrasound pictures ever look. The midwife pointed out the little heart beating (which we could actually see on the monitor. How cool!), and we could even see the baby opening and closing its mouth. We don't have any pictures because the midwife didn't know how to print with the old ultrasound machine, but I have the image ingrained in my memory (and everyone else will just have to wait).

This baby seems so much more real now that we've seen it with our own eyes. Now we just have to wait one more month before we can stop calling the baby "it" and "Humphrey #2" and start saying "him" or "her!"