Anatomy Scan

Today was our big anatomy scan.  I am currently 18 weeks and 4 days so Steve and I were both hoping we would be able to find out the baby's gender.  My appointment was at 9 am which mean I had to be up around 7:30 to shower and do all that stuff. I was supposed to drink 16 oz of water an hour before the ultrasound and drink it in less than 15 minutes - no problem.

We got to the appointment and didn't have to wait very long to go back.  The first thing the ultrasound tech said was that my bladder wasn't full enough. I told her I drank 16 oz of water and haven't peed since before I started drinking the water.  She said a full bladder helps make the baby straighten up and right now the baby was curled up in a ball.  So she said I might have to come back again in a few weeks to repeat the scan. Darn, that would be so horrible to have to go back and get to see my baby again.

She said she would scan as much as she could and go from there.  So she started to scan the baby's arms and abdomen, heart and brain.  She kept saying everything looked perfect and baby was measuring right on target. She seemed pleased with everything so we were too.  She started to scan the spine and said she would have to do it in small sections because the baby was curled up and she couldn't see the very bottom of the spine and again said we would have to come back in a few weeks.  Then all of a sudden the baby decided to move a little bit and instead of being crouched down with legs drawn up, baby stretched its legs out and she was able to get the bottom of the spine and leg measurements.

Then she asked us if we wanted to know the gender if she was able to see and we said yes.  So she looked and showed us in between the legs and said it looked like a girl cause she wasn't really seeing any boy parts.  Then she scanned a few more things and got a better shot at the parts and confirmed again that there were not any boy parts.  So ... we are having a baby girl!!

In total the ultrasound only took like 20 minutes and at the end she wasn't sure if we would end up having to come back for another scan in a few weeks or not.  Either way I will be having more than the average number of ultrasounds because of my gestational diabetes, but those won't really start until closer to 30 weeks.  For now the baby is healthy looking and right on track. We are starting to decide on our final baby name - we've had a few that we like.  I won't tell you our final decision yet but our top two contenders are Grace Elizabeth and Madelyn Faith.