Heartbeat or Just Good Hygiene? (32 weeks)

I’m now 32 weeks along in my pregnancy. That means 8 more weeks to go. We’re in the single digits now folks!

Holy crap.

I have a list a mile long of things that still need to be done. Most are relatively small, but still.

And we need to settle on a name. We each have ideas but we haven’t sat down to talk about them or compare.

It’ll all get done though and everything will work out just fine.

At least that’s what I keep telling myself.

This pic was taken at the end of a long day, on a weekend, hence the lack of make-up. And I’m wearing the same shirt as last week. How embarrassing…I have no shame.

Today was another baby doctor appointment AND we had another ultrasound! You could tell how much the baby had grown and developed in just the 12 weeks since our last one. The face was clearer. The heartbeat was stronger. There was less “space” in there to move around.

This time we brought Isabella along with us. I’m so glad we did too. She’s old enough to see what’s going on and understand most of it. It was fun to watch her reactions.

The first thing we saw was the face.

This is the front of the face with the top of the head on the right side. You can see one eye at the top, closed, the nose and mouth. It all looks kind of puffy and swollen. Not sure if that’s just the image quality or what.

It came up right away and was very clear. The mouth was moving like TTB was talking to us and it was blinking its eyes. Isabella said, “That’s what I looked like when I was in your tummy Mommy!”

They moved on then to looking at the placenta, abdomen, head and other “less fun” things and Isabella lost interest.

Then they moved on to the heart. First we saw the heart beating and then the tech flipped a switch to add a layer of color, so that they could look at blood flow. Isabella thought this was pretty neat.

But the best was yet to come!

When they started tracking the heart rate, that’s what really peaked her attention. On the screen we could see the line tracking the heartbeat and we could also hear it. She said, “What’s that noise coming from Mommy’s tummy? Is the baby gargling?” She wanted to hear it over and over and over. Maybe she’ll become a heart surgeon one day!

That was about the gist of it. They did try to get a good 3D image but the baby didn’t want to cooperate. TTB kept putting its hand over the face so that we really couldn’t see.

I know that’s hard to make out. This is a 3/4 view. The knob at the top is the umbilical cord. Directly below that is the head, with eyes shut and tilted slightly up. TTB has its chin resting on the back of its hand.

Now for some stats!

· The baby weighs a little over 4 lbs., which is in the 58th percentile.

· The heart beat was 158 bpm

· I have gained another 4 lbs. since my last visit 2 weeks ago. That’s more than I’d like but admittedly, I’ve been pigging out lately. Let’s just say baked brie, four-cheese macaroni, cheesecake, Valentine cookies, brownie sundaes, pesto pasta and donuts have all been consumed by me at some point in the last week. It’s time to get better about my diet again. If I keep this up I’ll be 200 pounds in no time!

· We still don’t know the sex. No we weren’t tempted to give in and find out at this second opportunity either.

One recent happening is that my legs are getting bigger and puffier. They’re the worst at the end of the day.

Here they are on Monday, after being gone and in heels for 13 hours. You can see where I started to swell up around the tops of my socks and puff out.

Also, cankles.