19 Weeks

The Ultrasound was scheduled for 9am, so I woke up at 4:45 to give myself plenty of time to shower, dress and eat. Actually, my alarm was set for 7:15, but I woke up early and could not go back to sleep. I tossed and turned for an hour, and then finally got up to watch the news and make myself a cup of 1/3-caff-coffee. I also checked the "winter weather closings list" about 700 times, because we'd had some snow, and after all these years, our city still doesn't quite know what to do when those white flakes start falling. I was worried about road conditions, and I even thought my OB office might close for the day.

At 7 o'clock, when I didn't see my OB on the list of closings, and I hadn't received a call about cancelling my appointment, I decided it was time to get moving. I showered and dressed, and went out to warm the car and scrape off the snow and ice while John was in the shower. At 8 o'clock sharp I was ready to go. Yes, our appointment was at 9am and yes, it only takes 15 minutes to get there, but we didn't know what the roads were like and I didn't want to be late. This was a very important date.

As it turned out, the roads were perfectly clear, so we were able to stop at Chick-fil-A for breakfast and orange juice - everyone said I should drink orange juice before The Ultrasound - and still make it to the OB office a whole 35 minutes early. AND THANK GOODNESS, because I had time to count the number of ceiling tiles in the waiting room. Twice.

My parents also came to see the baby, their first grand-baby. Thankfully, we all fit comfortably into the ultrasound room, and in fact, we could have fit another 10 people in there. I actually saw pictures of someone who had brought her whole family with her for her ultrasound. And I mean, her WHOLE family. There were like 15 people in that room, and all of them taking pictures and recording video. Me, I felt a little awkward having my parents there, but it was fine, and it was great to share the experience with them.

Good news is, baby did not look like a raw chicken breast or a large gummy bear. No, we saw everything - toes, feet, legs, a femur, the stomach, the diaphragm, kidneys, the four chambers of the heart, the aorta, the spinal column, hands, fingers, knuckles, lips, nose, eyes, the cerebellum, and lots of other things I can't remember now. Everything measured as it should, everything was where it should be.

At the very beginning, I thought I saw a flash of those three lines that are supposed to mean girl, but when I asked the technician if baby was a girl, she just said she'd tell me when she knew. Three years later, after we'd looked at everything else, we moved back to the bum and the legs, and we learned that we were having a girl.

A baby girl.

And she is beautiful.