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!

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!

Baby Update (16 weeks)

If my tummy is any indication, Baby Plantinga is continuing to grow and flourish in utero. Baby is now 16 weeks old, and should be about the size of one's hand (according to all the baby books we're reading), and I am now definitely wearing more maternity clothing, left with only a handful of pre-baby items that still fit.

The most exiting thing that Baby Plantinga has done recently is make his or her presence known to me. The other night I was laying awake in the middle of the night (after one of my MANY trips to the bathroom) and when I returned to bed, I'm pretty confident that I felt the baby move. It felt like a moth was trapped inside my tummy, moving around and trying to find its way out!

Also, we've decided to find out the gender of the baby, and we have an ultrasound scheduled for August 2nd, so you can expect another exiting update shortly after that appointment. Almost everyone who has made a guess thus far has said boy, and that has been my gut feeling throughout most of the pregnancy as well, but we'll soon find out for sure!

First Baby Picture

Baby's first ultrasound was a rousing success! Everything appears healthy and normal, and the baby even showed off a newly-beating heart and some primitive dance moves. We are quite happy and are eagerly awaiting a birth in the last week of December.