Oden Adventures

Patrick joined me for my doctor's visit today because we had an ultrasound - the first one since 20 weeks - and we were so eager to see our little girl!  We confess, we'd heard so many gender surprise stories in the last 16 weeks that we'd started to wonder if she really was a girl or if we were going to be sending Patrick on a mission to the mall for something blue post-birth.  But our wonderful doctor made sure to check and is very sure that she is in fact a girl :-).  We continue to love our doctor's both confident & humble manner.  She laughed and said, "I'm going to owe you if it's not a girl, huh?  I'll have to come over and repaint your nursery." :-)

Baby O.'s looking great - head down, feet up - in position and all ready to go (but we shall see about that, shan't we?).  Her heart is strong; we could see all four chambers on the screen - as well as her arms & legs & fingers & toes.

The ultrasound photo (see below) has us laughing hard for multiple reasons...1) it takes several minutes to figure out what the heck this is, 2) once you've got it oriented, you notice what looks like a huge pointy ear coming out of her head, 3) her head itself ends up looking like one of Gary Larson's comic strip kids, and 4) you notice her hands are up & out in front of her like she's either got her face pressed up against a two-way mirror trying to get a peek at us as well, or we've got a prenatal mime-in-a-box on our hands.

Ah, well - we'll see her in real life soon enough :-).  We're thanking God & feeling exceedingly blessed that all is going so smoothly - we know that this is a very great gift.  Overall, I'm feeling good - I feel like my discomfort (though sometimes worse than others) is minimal so I really can't...or at least shouldn't...and am trying not to...complain.  This is a very odd phase, this waiting game, knowing she could come tomorrow, or next week...or not for six more weeks!  In the meantime, we're doing our best to cherish things like sleeping in, choosing our own schedule, taking walks sans stroller, quiet moments reading or watching TV, moments that might be the last "just the two of us" doing something.  It's a sweet time, even though we know the future holds much sweetness of its own.

This is the last shot we took of me, two weeks ago.  Honestly, I don't think my belly would look too different today (no one who sees me believes I'm as far along as I am).