Hayley and Kate Minter

Today marks the midpoint in the pregnancy - we’re at 20 weeks of the 40! I sent Holly some flowers to her work to celebrate - hopefully she doesn’t pass out from the shock. I can’t remember the last time I sent her flowers.

It’s hard to believe we’re halfway there. Of course, we didn’t find out about it until a month or so in, but it’s still looming fast. The impatient side of me wants her to show up tomorrow (fully developed, of course, since she’s still probably about the size of a guinea pig now), but we should probably get stuff like the nursery done before she makes her appearance.

I think we may try to move the furniture out of the guest room over Labor Day weekend to start its transformation into the nursery.

We’re approaching the point where the baby’s heartbeat should be audiable through a normal stethoscope, instead of the doppler microphone. So we found out that the local Wal-Mart could order us a stethoscope for about $6, so we placed the order and picked it up last night.

We had a hard enough time finding our own heartbeats with the thing, either because the $6 stethoscope is too cheap or we just don’t know how to operate such a sophisticated piece of medical technology, so we didn’t get to hear the heartbeat last night. A temporary setback, I’m sure. Maybe when we go back to the doctor, we’ll see if they can show us how to use the stethoscope.

Other than that, the baby seems to be active. Often, I’ll mention her name and Holly will feel a kick, which is both a complete coincidence and very cool.

We went for our monthly checkup at the OBGYN’s today. Standard 10-minute visit (not counting the wait) where they just measured Holly’s belly, listened to the heartbeat on the Doppler microphone, and said “See you in a month!”

Of course, since I’m a geek, I brought the laptop in and asked if I could record the heartbeat. The doctor said that was the first time she’d seen anyone doing that. Greeeeeat. But I ran a line from the headphone jack on the Doppler to the microphone port on the laptop, and got about 10 seconds of Hayley’s hearbeat. If you want to listen to it, click the “Heartbeat audio” link at the top of the page. It’s available in WAV, MP3, and Ogg Vorbis formats.

Not much else of any note from the doctor, except that Holly needs to start putting on some more weight. She’s lost a pound since a month ago. Tonight, we start her on a diet of fatback and candy.

I’ve got the ultrasound pictures scanned in from our Week 18 visit, to go along with the Week 12 pictures. You can get to them via the “Ultrasound Pictures” link at the top of the page.

The pictures aren’t nearly as cool as the ultrasound itself was. We really only have two different shots - two pictures of a kinda top-view (her head to the right, body to the middle). You can see some decent details in the head, but that’s about it. Unless you’re the kind of person who only sees blobs in these Ultrasound pictures, in which case you might see things like in an ink-blot test.

The other picture is the obligatory “It’s A Girl” shot, which I hope doesn’t violate any decency laws. To see what’s going on in the picture, imagine the baby’s sitting on a glass table, and you’re looking up at her from underneath. So her butt’s to the right, with both legs sticking out to the left, and her, um, “girl parts” in the middle.

We went to Rex Hospital today for our second ultrasound. The little critter’s grown quite a bit in the past six weeks or so. Whereas at the first ultrasound, all you could see was a head, body, and a couple of little nubs, this time there was a ton of movement!

I guess I can dispense with the gender-neutral pronouns. As you’ll be able to tell from the Ultrasounds pictures (when I scan them), it’s a girl! Yup, a genuine double-X chromosome female. Of course, this just means the estrogen level at the Virginia Embassy will go up a little more, with me as the only male in the house.

So SHE was really active during the ultrasound, and we could see a lot more detail. She was moving her arms all around, kicking her legs, twisting - having a grand old time! We could see details like the bones in her fingers, her brain and spine, and everything else. The ultrasound tech said that everything looked like it was developing perfectly. That’s my girl!

I’ll try to have the ultrasound pics up soon, as well as make this blog active.