Thursday, March 1, 2012

Ultrasound and pregnancy update

The four of us went to my 12 week appointment yesterday. We had hoped to hear the baby's heartbeat, but Doctor Jones couldn't hear the baby over the incredibly loud sound of my own pulse. He explained that the uterus has two huge arteries the size of his thumb on either side of where the baby lives. Those arteries carry all the blood and nutrients to the placenta and baby. He said I have huge, loud arteries, which is a good thing. He said I'm growing a big, healthy baby. Unfortunately my loud pulse drowned out the sound of the baby's tiny heartbeat. The baby's heart is the size of the tip of a ball-point pen. I'm proud of my kick-ass uterus, but we were a little disappointed and slightly nervous that we couldn't hear the heartbeat.
Doctor Jones sent us over to Teton Radiology, where I drank a gallon of water and a diet Coke and then we had an ultrasound. The tech found the baby and the heartbeat within about 2 seconds, so Landon went out and got the girls so they could see it. It was super cool to see it floating around in there.
I've had zero morning sickness and have been just as "rarin' to go" as usual, so a part of me has been thinking it's all in my head. It was nice to see proof. On a side note, I have been craving eggs non-stop (over-easy or scrambled), and I've finally popped out of my pants. I bought this thing called a "tummy sleeve," which is just a spandex tube of fabric that covers my unbuttoned, unzipped jeans and goes up to just under my bra. It keeps my pants up and smooths out the top of my jeans so I can survive several more weeks without maternity pants, which don't exist for 6'2" fat pregnant ladies.
Here's the ultrasound picture:
I know it appears indescipherable, but the head is on top (thankfully), the spine is along the right side of the picture, and the "tail" curves under the spine.

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

Glad you explained what I was seeing because I thought it was a boar head...did anyone else see that?
Congrats to guys!!

Heidi said...

Ah, this is making me so nostalgic for when I had my ultrasounds. I'm glad everything is going well.

Shannon said...

Am I the only mush or did anyone else tear up when they saw the ultrasound picture? How exciting!!

Anonymous said...

When we had kids you stood in front of a bright light and the doctor said, Yep, you're pregnant!
We are sooo excited, thus the 2nd reply. Might have bought flannel this week, just saying.

Shannon said...

After I read Mom's comment and looked closer at the picture I swear I saw a grinning skeleton snake head...maybe it is like looking at the magic picture books...or staring into the sun for too long...it does get boring here.

jenny said...

I can't wait for T-bone to get here!!!

weasel said...

It's fun to see one of those pictures for someone I know, I see 1000 of them a day here...after a year - it's still hard to see what the hell is going on in there until they get further along, but the heartbeat is the coolest part, so glad they were able to find it the 2nd time around! Lauren's party looks like fun, glad she had a good time!