Cute new pics & sweet hook-ups

Yesterday I had my 'formal ultrasound' - my OB refers his patients to the OB department at OU to have this done, for some reason, so I wasn't with my regular doctor. But as it turned out, that led to kind of a sweet turn of events......
This ultrasound was the one in which all the limbs and organs are measured to make sure everything is developing nicely. I got to see the bloodflow from the heart through the major blood vessels to the organs, which was pretty cool (though also kind of funny-looking, since that function on the U/S uses the same technology as the news people use on their weather radars!), and I got to see kidneys and abdominal organs and all the little vertebrae in the spine. It'll take a little while for the actual results to trickle down to me because the doctor has to go through all the images the tech took and make sure that everything's ok and there aren't any abnormalities. So I'll probably find out when I have my next regular OB appointment. But the tech said that everything looked great and that they don't let people leave the clinic if there's even a little suspicion of any significant problems, so I feel pretty good about things :)


Our tiny baby's getting all fat and round! Much like myself, oddly....
The head is on the right of the picture, and you can see its right eye, nose and mouth. Its eyes are finally on the front of its head instead of the sides, and it has little eyelids that are fully formed but can't open for another couple of weeks. Its hand is up beside its head, and its round belly is the other large circular shape in the picture!






The head's on the left now (we woke it up when we started ultrasounding, and it would *not*lie still for the whole rest of the appointment! Whenever it moves now, I can see the outside of my belly getting poked outwards - it's hilarious!), and this is more of a profile shot. Its right arm is down by the side of its belly and its left arm was just moving out of view - it's that vertical shape suspended in the middle of nowhere :) The little pile on top of its belly is some umbilical cord, and one of its folded-up legs is just disappearing off the right hand edge of the picture.


Once the tech had gotten all her measurements and views that she needed, she realised she had a little extra time before the next appointment. So she switched over to the 3D-4D function and we got to play with that for a while, which was super-sweet! I've been trying to find somewhere that Mark can sneak me in so we can get some 3D pictures without having to pay $150 for it ... so I was pretty happy when the tech gave me some for free. She did say that I wasn't supposed to tell anyone she'd done it and that she'd deny it was her if anyone found out - but hey, I'll take what I can get! The first one is pretty much the same view as the profile shot up there except that it tucked its hand up behind its head so a cross-section of the elbow is pointing at you, and the second one is my favourite ever. We're going to have the most beautiful baby of all time :)