18 Weeks

18 week belly

Baby Osterman (skeletor in this picture!) looking right at the camera.


A profile shot of the baby. You can see his(?) leg bent and I think part of his hand in the back. You can also see his spinal bones all lit up.

Almost halfway already! It seems like this is flying by, but the end is still so far away. This week Josh and I got a surprise, and we got to get a sneak peek at Baby Osterman. Josh's mom works at the Methodist Family Medical Center downtown, and they have residents and interns that are still training to become doctors. On Thursday she called me and said that the OB residents were going to be doing practice ultrasounds on Friday and asked if we were interested in helping them out! We even got paid $20 for every half hour, but I would have done it for free. I was so excited to see what the baby looked like, since our first ultrasound just looked like a jelly bean. Now it would actually look like a baby! So, the next day we went to her office and about 6 residents got to take turns using the machine on me and checking out the baby. We could see the heart beating, the spine, and several times the baby was wiggling all over the place. It even looked like it was sucking its thumb at one point! It was really cool, and we learned a lot about the ultrasound machine by listening to the attending doctor as he taught. When all the residents were done we asked if the doctor could tell if it was a boy or a girl yet. We didn't have our regular appointment until the 22nd, so we were excited to hear if we could find out early. He moved the wand around my belly and got a shot right in between the baby's legs, from the bottom up. It definitely looked like a boy! He said there was still a chance that it was the umbilical cord, but he felt pretty sure that we were looking at a boy. And from what I saw, I'm pretty sure it was too. The pictures above are the ones they printed off for us. We don't have a scanner, so sorry if they are a little blurry from my camera.

Right now my symptoms are pretty much the same. I feel like some days I do get worn out easily and need a little nap, so it will be interesting to see how I do once work starts up again. Otherwise energy levels are good and still very little nausea. My belly doesn't seem to have grown too much in the past two weeks, so sorry if my belly picture isn't too exciting. Finally, I think I am starting to feel little movements from the baby, especially after seeing it wiggling around on the ultrasound. I have felt some tickly feelings recently, and then today at the end of church I think maybe the baby was kicking or head-butting me. It's hard to describe, but it sort of felt like a bubble. We'll see if I feel that again or if it was just my breakfast moving around :)