the blog stays pink

The long awaited sex has finally been revealed... after a nice long spell of modesty and refusal to cooperate. It's a girl! Our nurse, Shawn, was an excellent narrator and printed lots of ultrasounds for us. So here you go. The pictures are in order of the anatomy scan. First, measurements were taken of the head circumference and parts of the brain. Here's the photo Shawn refers to as "Skeletor." She also checked to be sure there wasn't a cleft lip-there's not. You can see both hemispheres of her brain.

The weirdo kept her face smushed up against the (sorry) placenta for a long time. She kept touching it and gumming it; like I said, weirdo. We were able to see her practice breathing, something that isn't necessary at this point, but it was still good to see. This is her profile and her fist banging on the placenta. Maybe she's trying to communicate with the outer world? Who knows. I still don't feel anything. Shawn said it was because of where the placenta is. It's cushiony and provides about a two week buffer compared to others before I'll start noticing anything.

Then we saw her heart beating. 155 bpm, very good. Four chambers, again, very good. Also saw a few of her major arteries. It was surreal to see both hers and mine on the screen together. This is just her heart and the beat pattern. It's always cool to hear it.

We were able to see her suck her thumb, stick her fingers up her nose (or at least that's what it looked like), hide her face, and "box." Here's her fists up in front of her face (which you can't see), like a boxer. The black hole under her fists is her heart.
Then we saw toes. If you can make it out, foot on the left is her left foot; hence the modesty (crossed legs) that prevented us from seeing if she was a boy or girl for quite some time. She appears to have all her fingers and toes.

This is her spine. I think it's creepy looking. Her bum is to the left, she has a very little butt like Ryan. Her arms and legs are curled underneath; she's literally in the fetal position. Her head's partially cut off, but it's to the right.

Shawn kept checking for girl/boy parts in between various measurements. Towards the end, she opened her legs JUST enough to see something. You can see her thighs are still pretty close together. In the end, she flashed us a few times for Shawn to be confident of the sex.

Here's a picture of her legs, crossed and locked. (Let's hope this is a good indicator of what she'll be like with the boys.) You can see her knobby knees, calves, and a foot. This is the position she kept her lower body in for most of the scan, despite all the orange juice I drank beforehand.

So that's that. Mystery solved, we're having a girl. Oh and she's currently 9 ounces, give or take a little. The entire time, she was laying horizontally in my belly. We had to poke her around a lot to get some of these shots.