Week 20

"You've made it to the halfway mark — congratulations! Your baby weighs about 10 1/2 ounces now. She's around 6 1/2 inches long from head to bottom, and about 10 inches from head to heel. (For the first 20 weeks, we use measurements taken from the top of the baby's head to her bottom — known as the "crown to rump" measurement. After that, we use measurements from head to toe. This is because a baby's legs are curled up against her torso during the first half of pregnancy and are very hard to measure.)

A greasy white substance called vernix caseosa coats your baby's entire body to protect her skin during its long submersion in amniotic fluid. This slick coating will also ease the journey down the birth canal when the time comes.

Your baby is swallowing more, which is good practice for her digestive system. She's also producing meconium, a black, sticky substance that's made up of dead cells, digestive secretions, and swallowed amniotic fluid. This meconium will accumulate in her bowels, and you'll see it in her first messy diaper (although a few babies pass it in utero or during delivery)."

-- from www.babycenter.com

Our little soccer player

Okay, so that might be a small exaggeration! But this past week, I have started to feel what I believe is William moving and/or kicking. My first feeling was about a week ago, when Jen was here, and I felt some odd flip-flopping like sensations, as if something was flip-flopping over in my lower abdomen. Since then, I have sometimes felt similar things, mostly feeling like little kicks. One time there was a pretty good kick. It's hard for me to know if these are really the baby or just a really active GI tract. Just now, I was feeling what I term as little kicks on my left side, inside, but they feel like large gas bubbles that suddenly shift places. I'm definitely looking forward to a couple of weeks in the future, when I can know for sure that what I'm feeling is William.

In other news, I'm doing well. I've gained about 5-8 lbs. so far, which I think is good for me and my pre-pregnancy weight. However, I have noticed that all of that weight seems to have attached itself to a few key places on my body, most horribly my thighs and butt. :-) Mainly I'm feeling very good, only I've been tired the past couple of days due to poor sleep. I can't seem to get comfortable without having my lower back hurt. I'm trying not to sleep on my back, but that doesn't always work as I sometimes find myself waking up on my back. I bought a body pillow, for which I now have to make a pillow case, and that may help me sleep better, but I still don't know why my lower back hurts when I wake up. After I'm up for about 5 minutes, the pain has gone away, though, for which I am grateful. We may need to rotate the mattress!

I've called a couple of nurseries in Auburn, and Darryl & I will hopefully visit at least two of them next week. I would like to have my name on all waiting lists possible before the end of next week. There is one daycare here that has spots available, but it was the least impressive over the phone; we'll have to go visit it to see what it's like in person.

I'm trying to put a list together of things that we still need for the baby. We are going to try to make due without certain things, such as a baby washtub. Darryl & I both agree that we can use a sink or take the baby in to a bath with us. Jen told me she would take showers with Eben and even came to be so adept at it that she could hold Eben and shave her legs in the shower! I am not quite that ambitious, but I do figure that William can be in a bath with me, with Darryl standing by: we can wash him, Darryl can dry him off and I will finish my bath or just take a shower later. Really, we wouldn't need a changing table either, having such a large counter in the bathroom, but seeing as a changing table came with our house, we will use it. I cleaned it off last weekend, but we'll need to paint it and get a mattress pad for it, and some storage baskets for the shelves.

:-) All in all, Darryl & I are very happy! I am certainly in much better spirits after seeing the ultrasound than I've been in for probably years! We are both looking so forward to meeting our new baby and discovering his personality. The thought of being responsible for such a tiny life is quite daunting, but I think that Darryl and I, together, will be up to the task.

Week 19

"Your baby weighs about 8 1/2 ounces, and he measures 6 inches, head to bottom — about the length of a small zucchini. His arms and legs are in the right proportions to each other and the rest of his body now. His kidneys continue to make urine, and the hair on his scalp is sprouting. If your baby is a girl, she has an astonishing six million eggs in her ovaries.

This is a crucial time for sensory development: Your baby's brain is designating specialized areas for smell, taste, hearing, vision, and touch. While you may think your womb is a quiet place, it's far from it and your baby may be able to hear what's going on now. What's he listening to? The main sounds are blood moving through your vessels, digestive noises from your stomach, and your voice. Some women like to talk directly to their babies, but even if you don't, your baby can still hear you as you talk to others. Research shows that he's learning to distinguish your voice from others and he'll soon show a preference for it. Studies have shown that when a pregnant woman speaks, her baby's heart rate will decrease, indicating relaxation."

--from www.babycenter.com

Ultrasound photos: 01-04-07

Here are the photos from our first ultrasound appointment:

This is a view of the back of the baby, looking primarily at his spine. His head is to the left and his butt to the right.






This is a photo showing the baby's face (on the left--it looks rather skeletal) and probably part of a cross-section through the abdomen on the right side. The top of the baby's head is left-most and you can see a view into the braincase. Then there are the large eye orbits to either side of the opening for the nose (mind, you are seeing hard structures here: the baby's face looks more human than this, but his skin is very thin). You can just make out a faint mouth, and the chin is the very clear demarcation between the white (from the skeleton) and the black (amniotic fluid space).


Here is a view of the baby's femurs. The best way to visualize this is to imagine that the baby is sitting on a chair and you are looking down on his legs (from hip to knee) and you are only seeing the legs. The most visible of the two femurs is that white line immediately to the left of the word "femur".


This is a cross-sectional view through probably the broadest part of the baby's head. The "darker" white circle delineates the bones of the cranium, and you can see the brain inside (kind of freaky!).




This is a side view of the baby, showing him facing down (as far as the ultrasound probe orientation goes). You can see his head to the left and his spine going across the top, curving gently down to his tailbone on the right.


This is one of my favourite views, because to me it looks very much like a baby. You are seeing William here at a 3/4 view, where his back and side are visible. His head is on the left and you can faintly see an ear. You can also faintly see the tip of the nose, above which is his balled fist. Most of the lightish part is his side/abdomen, and his little leg is sticking up on the right.


Another, similar view. To help the visualization, on the left you see black, with a curved white line about 2/3 of the way down the screen. The white line there marks the bottom of his head. If you move up through the dark space then, the little white line you encounter next is the crescent of his ear. A small distance beyond that is the front-side edge of his head. He appears to have one of his hands touching, or very near, his face. On the right, the little dark space delineated in white is his leg (up to the knee at the top).


It's a boy! This is a "toilet seat view", with the backs of baby's thighs sticking up on either side of his manhood. This should be a comparatively easy ultrasound photo to make out.




It is hard for me to describe exactly how you may be able to see this, but this photo shows baby's two arms and hands coming up over his abdomen to rest in front of his face. So you are looking down on the baby's stomach from above here. The face is on the left (mostly obscured--I can't make out details, I just know it's there from the baby's orientation) and the stomach is on the right.


Here is baby's arm. The shoulder is sort of at the top, the still-forming humerus is to the left of the word "arm", pointing as though to 5 o'clock. The forearm is almost parallel to the bottom of the photo, going from right (elbow) to left (hand).


This is a cross-section through the baby's abdomen, where the baby is facing left (his head is "above" the photo). The dark little circular area within the greyish cross-section is the baby's stomach, and the fact that it's dark indicates that there is fluid in the stomach. This means that baby is able to swallow (a sign of things being normal!).


This last photo is of the baby's leg and foot. The leg starts off just above where the word "leg" appears (this is the thigh). You can see the femur, then the small bend at the knee, the lower leg, and the foot is starting to be obscured a bit. The foot is beyond the tibia/fibula of the lower leg, pointing vaguely in a 7 or 8 o'clock orientation.

Here is the promised recording of Baby's heartbeat:

http://www.griebeling.com/baby_heartbeat_12_14_06.mp3

Also, yesterday I bought a Pack & Play, and here are some photos of what it looks like set up and packed up:

(click on the photos to see them enlarged)

- - - -

I posted that little blurb (entry below) about dreams, because I do notice that my dreams are rather vivid. They have always been fairly vivid and interesting, but they are even moreso now. Last night I dreamt that I gave birth to a baby boy and I laughed with joy at seeing that he was a boy, and he had dark blond hair. However, he also had somewhat deformed fingers: his left hand, the last three fingers were sort of mangled and the skin was transluscent and you could see lots of blood vessels in there; the right hand looked sort of bird-like, where the physical arrangement of the fingers and thumb was off. (I think this part of the dream was due to me worrying the night before about whether the baby would be deformed). But, somehow, this was a unique boy in that he grew very quickly. In the span of about 2 hours, he had somehow aged to be about 2 years old and could already talk. He also had red hair then.

A second dream I had was about me needing to get past a fire-breathing dragon and his hoard of gold on the landing of a long stone staircase. I couldn't just get past him because he started practising his fire-breathing skills. I had a whole bag of gold coins (more than were in the hoard), and I thought to lure him down the stairs with the coins. I started down the stairs and was throwing coins to and fro, which he would collect. Once at the bottom of the stairs, I thought that I could run up and past him, past the hoard (not sure if I was meant to collect these hoarded coins). But I woke up at this point, most likely because of the sound of cats puking or playing or scratching or doing something annoying to interrupt my sleep!

Week 17

"Your baby weighs about 5 ounces now, and he's around 5 inches long — about the size of a large onion. The umbilical cord, his lifeline to the placenta, is growing stronger and thicker. Your baby can move his joints, and his skeleton — until now, rubbery cartilage — is starting to harden into bone. Some of it will remain cartilage for years after he's born. A newborn's skeleton has 300 parts (a combination of bone and cartilage). As your child grows, some of these parts harden and fuse together. By the time your baby reaches adulthood, he'll have just 206 bones. "

- from www.babycenter.com

Surprising Facts: Common pregnancy dreams

"Has your dream life shifted into high gear? That's partly because you may be interrupting a dream-filled cycle of REM sleep when you get up to pee, cope with a leg cramp, or shift to a more comfortable position. Waking up during REM sleep makes you more likely to remember your dreams. Pregnancy hormones may also play a role.

Some experts think pregnancy dreams symbolize your excitement, fear, and apprehension about the physical and emotional changes happening to you. Here's a look at some common themes and what they may mean, according to Patricia Garfield, a clinical psychologist and author of Women's Bodies, Women's Dreams.

You're caring for baby animals. During the second trimester, many pregnant women dream about cuddly, baby-like animals, such as puppies, chicks, and kittens. Friendly creatures in your dreams are generally thought to signify that you're tuned in to your instincts. Menacing animals, on the other hand, may represent ambivalence about the strange new creature coming into your life. "

- from www.babycenter.com