So, today we had our anatomy ultrasound. We were anxious and excited to see the baby and went in for an 8 am appointment to get the best view of him or her first thing in the morning. Now, before we get to the actual results we'll share a little background. Since about 10 weeks along I've been calling the baby 'him' or 'he'. Think what you will--, mother's intuition, poor use of pronouns....Drew agreed later on and predicted the baby was a boy. As we shared the news of our pregnancy and upcoming wee one most of our family veered to the female side of things. We heard lots of 'I think it's a girl because the heartbeat is so high', 'I just know you're having a girl' and my personal favorite: 'I think its a girl, because, well--, I want it to be a girl'. So we've heard from most folks that I would likely be having a girl based on their own personal intuition and since Drew and I have no particular bias, we prepared for both. We chose a boy and girl bedding, we talked about neutral paint colors and began the search for both boy and girl names.
...The search for names. Another topic entirely. Since I'm you're classic Type A personality, I had taken the 60,000+ baby names book and highlighted each name I liked so that we could compile a list of choice names to which we would then select the best few from and determine what the baby would be called. I did this oh, say, about 2 months ago. So, Drew, who is a bit less Type A, took his time and seemed to forget to go through the book after many reminders until this past Sunday. However, I do credit him for going right to task on Sunday. He spent the day reviewing names and updating lists. We collaborated on a joint list and found the boys names incredibly easy to select. We've got about 5 that we both equally like and we'd chose any of them for this little bugger. Then there were the girls names. For every name I liked, Drew disliked two and together we came up with a very short list of 'okay names', which in my book just wouldn't do. Who wants to name their kid something 'just satisfactory'? Anyhow, think of this situation what you will as we move on to today.
So, back to the original story. We get to the Dr.'s office and start the ultrasound and we were greeted with this cute profile. Here's the baby today:
It's amazing to see how the baby has grown. Throughout the ultrasound they showed us all of the baby's anatomy,the stomach, the kidneys, spinal cord, portions of the brain,bones, limbs, fingers, toes, mouth, nose... and the list goes on. They used fantastic technology to show us the blood flow in and out of the chambers of the heart and we were amazed to see the great detail, from nearly sucking his or her thumb, to flexing his or her big toes. It was so incredible to get a glimpse into the world of our newest family member. The technicians quickly confirmed what I've known for the past few weeks- this baby likes to move. The techs spent over an hour trying to get appropriate shots of all of the parts needed to make assessments on how the baby is doing while he or she jumped, twisted, turned, punched and kicked around. Here's the baby's little face, which looks a bit scary because you can see all of the skeletal bones in the face, but nonetheless is still incredibly cute to us.
Here are some of those little toes. Along the process we told the techs of our own as well as our family member's predictions, which they took in stride and started in on all the other body parts. After about a half hour of scans they finally asked us if we wanted to know what the gender is. Which we said yes, but don't think we're going to offer the information to you just yet....we'll make you wait at least until the end of the post. It's not everyday we get your undivided attention! So, going on with the ultrasound, the doctor came in and gave us the thumbs up on health. Currently the baby's femur, that big bone in your upper leg is 1 1/8 inches long. That's a little smaller than the distance between your first and second knuckle on your index finger. So, if you are wondering just how big the baby is use that as a gauge to consider the rest of his or her body. The baby now weights 10.5 oz, so he or she is quickly approaching a pound, which my waistline is clearly reeling from. Soon I'll have to make the trip to the maternity section.
So, finally, here's exactly what you've been waiting for. All along, all of the signs and intuitions were leading us in the right direction- because we're expecting
A BOY!!!, and just in case there is any wonder about the certainty of such an assumption we've shared the shot that tells it all. We apologize in advance to our little guy for showing off all his parts before he has any say in it :) So maybe all along we really were inclined to know what we were in for, and maybe when deciding names we should have just stopped at the boys names, but nevertheless we couldn't be sure until we saw this shot and confirmed our suspicions. So to all the members of our families who thought it was a girl we're adding a 'we told you so' and wishing you better luck next time :)
We can't wait to meet our little guy, and while we have names picked out we are keeping at least that part a secret, so you'll have to check with us at delivery to find out what we name him. Until them we'll begin preparing the nursery for a beautiful, healthy, baby boy! We feel especially blessed and are so happy to share that everything is going well and to offer the exciting news of the first baby boy Hollman to join our family.
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