Friday, August 17, 2007

My "condition"

A few days ago I was in the checkout line at the library when a tiny old lady approaches me and says "You're in my favorite condition!" with a big smile on her face. She's old enough that I begin to wonder if she knows what she's saying, and I must look visibly confused, because she points to my stomach and winks. Ah, I get it now, and I realize that she is the first stranger who has identified me as a pregnant woman. I'm feeling pretty happy that I look pregnant, as opposed to pudgy, to the rest of the world, and I half listen as the woman tells me about having six children and many grandchildren. Suddenly, we both notice another woman with a bump about my size listening to us a few feet away. "Congratulations to you too!" says the old lady, and in response, the woman with the bump sadly informs us that she's not pregnant but only wearing comfortable clothing. So much for my verification of looking pregnant and not pudgy - turns out old ladies like this one think everyone is pregnant!

Saturday, August 4, 2007

It's a girl!

Yesterday we went to the hospital for our detailed ultrasound. The night before, I felt like a little kid on Christmas Eve, and couldn't sleep at all - in part because of the excitement of learning more about this great gift we're being given! Our ultrasound was scheduled early in the morning (though not quite as early as I thought, and thus we arrived 30 minutes early for our appointment), and we watched for over an hour as a student technician, and eventually a more experienced technician, measured all the growing parts of our baby. We saw the liver, the kidneys, the brain, the heart, the spine, the bones in the legs and arms and finally our technician said "there it is - it's a girl". She seemed very confident in this proclamation, as we saw what looked like three dots and a line to Eric and I, and patiently explained that was the labia. So, we are now eagerly awaiting the birth of our daughter! Our little girl wouldn't fully cooperate to let the technician view the four chambers of the heart as well as she wanted, so we'll probably end up going back in a few weeks, but we were able to see that the heart was beating, and seems to be working just fine, and was registering a fetal heart beat of 138 (which is well within the normal range). Praise God!