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Today marked visit #5 to the doctor’s office — 20 weeks into pregnancy.


Yes… that would be visit #5. Visit #4 happened back on January 14th and was just a minor checkup and the ideal time to have blood drawn for a test known as the AFP test. That test takes two weeks to process and we heard back in the mail that all is well.

Kind of a funny test really… we heard that there are both false positives and false negatives with this test, so we weren’t sure exactly how much stock could be put in it. But it’s mainly for detecting genetic disorders and spinal tube defects, so we weren’t really too concerned… well at least no more than is usual for a couple expecting their first child.
So today we headed in for the big ultrasound, or as Jess had begun to call it “baby sex day,” as in the day we would find out the gender of our little one. We got there a few minutes late, but signed in and went back to the “ultrasound room” without incident. It didn’t take long before we were again mesmerized by the grainy black & white images moving about the screen on the big Siemens ACUSON in the corner of the room.

The ultrasound technician / sonographer, Alex, was the same girl that took care of us on the first visit. She’s got a nice manner and we like her. She is quite precise and accurate and seems to know her stuff quite well, as I would hope most people in her position would. I found it humorous that before I was even seated she asked us if we were wanting to find out the gender of the baby…. to which we both responded, “oh yeah!”

Jess got her belly covered with what I’m sure was the nice cold lubricant gel and Alex got to work. We could immediately see a spine, ribs, little arms, legs and a head, with bones forming and everything. So cool! I just stared in amazement as all different parts were checked and measured. We started really with the heart which was just amazing. You could clearly see all 4 chambers of the heart and watch them pump blood around that little body. Just unreal to imagine that going on inside of Jess! Pulse was taken: 149!

The examination continued for about 30 minutes looking at all different aspects and parts of the baby. The head was measured, including the brain. It was amazing to see the cerebellum show up on the screen, the measurement of which is one way to precisely determine the growth of the baby. We were at exactly 20 weeks and 3 days, just as we expected, and meaning our original planned due date of June 28th was right on target. So we continued to look at arms, legs, feet, hands, etc., and finally the big moment came… the buttshot. It took a little bit looking at different depths to get just the right view…. but we definitely could see that the baby is a GIRL! What a relief! We won’t have to figure out a boy name!
Things wrapped up quickly after that and Alex said that everything looked really good and she would be passing along all the information to our Doctor who we’ll be see in a couple weeks. So she handed us some of the print outs to take home and we got ourselves together and headed off to work.