Baby!!

As I know a lot of you are anxious for belly pictures, I am finally getting a post put together of baby stuff.  We just had our 18 wk ultrasound today, and everything is running smoothly thus far.  For those of you who went through childbirth before this new fangled technology, let me just tell you that I think it is absolutely wondrous what you can see with this little wave machine.  This ultrasound session was basically taking pictures of little one from head to toes, taking measurements, making sure everything is properly in place.  She didn't include a lot of the pictures in our CD, but we could see the little bones making up the whole spine, we could see each little hand and foot, and, at the current size of a dime, we could see every beating chamber of its little heart.  I don't know if it was just the medical side of my brain, but I was fascinated at what was visible and so clearly that even our untrained eyes could see it.....much different experience from our 7 wk ultrasound.  And I know a lot of you are wondering, but, unfortunately we will not be able to tell you what we are having.  Decided to keep the suspense up and we don't want to find out the gender before it's born; so periodically we had to look away from the screen during our session lest we accidentally see something.  So, here we go with the pics.....

I think I got those all in chronological order, as you can see I'm getting more and more enthused when Josh pulls out the camera, but usually just because he likes to sit there and wait until I lose my patience and tell him to take the damn picture already......we have a lot of good angry mandi face pictures right now.

As well as.......

Fun first trimester pictures.  Do not let some of the similar poses fool you; these were all taken on separate days, I believe the couch will forever have my body shape impressed into it's cushions from how much time I spent there those first few weeks.  Thankfully, I do have much more energy these days and am not stuck in these positions at all times when I am home.  

Sooooooo finally.........

I kept the first couple of pictures in because really at this point these were the types of images we saw the most of; the fetus is mostly skeletal at this point with very little fat so much of the face pictures just look like those of sugar skulls on Day of the Dead pictures.  She didn't include some of the other singular body part pictures, but it was about the same for the back, feet, hands.....you could see all the little bones with a little outline of body fat.  But, you can see we got a few images that are starting to look less skeletal and more "baby like".  We got a couple of 3-D pics too, but, in my opinion, you can't see much and they're more creepy, but if you want to see them I'll put them down at the bottom and you can be your own judge.  All in all, a pretty surreal experience.  The baby spent the whole time squirming, wiggling, turning, also amazing to me because I still haven't really "felt" anything.  The books just tell me it should feel like gas, and I tell the books, I feel that all the time, what's new.  Now that we've seen it move so much, though, I am imaging that I can feel it a little, though if that's actually the truth or just what I'm telling myself, I'll never know.  I love you all and can't wait to be in Texas next week soaking up some ungodly heat and good family time :)





Here are the 3-D pics

So from this view, you can see the front of the face, belly and left arm.  Kind of just looks like a creepy alien blob to me, but you can get the idea.....