Anatomy Scan

This morning I had my 20 week anatomy scan for Alien. It was already our 4th ultrasound for the little guy, and you'd think you'd get used to how cool it is, but no, every time you see your little one in there with a beating heart and moving arms and legs it is pretty amazing!

Alien appears healthy and is the in utero opposite of his sister. With Noelle we could never see her back and spine. Alien doesn't like us to see his front, hence the lack of pictures posted here. We got a quick profile shot at the very end of our ultrasound, but otherwise the little guy was swimming around on his tummy, giving us an awesome view of every vertebrate but keeping us from checking out whether mommy or daddy's nose is at play with this little one. We got to see the heart beating for about 30 minutes as they tried to get a specific 4 chamber shot, and that was cool. Alien's heartbeat was 146, so pretty consistent with what it has been the last few checks, and about 20 beats less per minute than Noelle's. So maybe there is some truth to the heart beat gender old wives tales!

We quickly glimpsed 2 cute feet, hands, fingers, and boy parts. Alien doesn't like to stay still for long so the ultrasound tech had to do some fast work with the equipment to get anything she needed! But so far things look good and it is crazy that we'll meet this little guy in just 4.5 months. But first we need to get through my crazy summer work season and Bryan's hectic work schedule. It is great we are busy at work in this economy but we sure are tired! At least being exhausted means I am still sleeping through the night (minus the bathroom breaks!) At this point with Noelle I'd been doing late night snacks and computer time about 2 hours a night pretty consistently for weeks. I'd love to hold off on that as long as possible this time!

So we are excited that Alien looks good and want to thank him for allowing us to take a week off from driving to JHU. Maybe he'll be cooperative at delivery too? Oh, I should mention he weighs 12 oz (a little more than the 20 week average) and is measuring exactly on target for his due date. It was definitely nice not to leave the anatomy scan knowing we had an extra 2 weeks of pregnancy to endure like we did last time!