Ultrasound Adventures {Katie}

As soon as I found out I was pregnant, all I wanted to do was rush to my OB’s office and get an ultrasound. 1) So that I could confirm something was actually in there, and 2) to see our little one for the first time, no matter now small. Now, when I found out I was pregnant, baby was the size of a poppyseed, so an ultrasound wouldn’t have been much to look at.

When I called the doctor’s office to let them know I was pregnant, they asked me the date of the first day of my last period. Using that, they calculated my “due date.” I assumed my first visit would consist of an ultrasound to confirm the pregnancy, with a check-up from my new OB (I was previously seeing a doctor that only did GYN).

The day of our first visit finally came (mid-December), and we eagerly went to the office. We met the ARNP associated with most (or all?) of the OBs, asked a ton of questions, and learned even more about what to expect during our pregnancy. We got to the end of the appointment, and I finally had to ask, “so, are we getting an ultrasound today?” She told me that typically they don’t do ultrasounds until 20 weeks, unless there’s some confusion about the due date. So I told her I had some confusion about my due date. I told her the story about my late implantation bleeding and not being able to get a positive pregnancy test until a week after I missed my period (I’ll go more into detail about this in another post). She said, “it sounds like you ovulated late. Let’s get you in for an ultrasound to confirm the due date.”

YES!! I thought, let’s do this!! Well, she told me to go schedule with the scheduler. The soonest spot they had was five days later, at 7:45 a.m. NO!!! I thought, I can’t wait any longer!!

Well, we made those five long days. It was an empty bladder ultrasound, and I knew I’d have NO problem needing to empty my bladder at the office. I mean, this whole pregnancy I’ve pretty much been able to pee on command. It’s weird.

It was just Joel and me, and the office was pretty empty. 7:45 is pretty stinking early. It was an transvaginal ultrasound (I hate writing and saying that, it’s just weird), and the first thing she did was go straight to the uterus, and said, “there’s only one!”

That’s what it looked like. The first time we saw that sweet little fetus, Joel grabbed my hand, and I got tears in my eyes. I’m tellin’ ya, it was one of the most amazing moments of my life. I felt like I finally could let go of the big breath I’d been holding since I got that positive pregnancy test.

She then moved around my insides, checking different things. It got a little uncomfortable a couple times, as she poked into my internal organs, but then she went back to baby and all was well. She switched to 3D and even 4D, and it was amazing how much detail we could see! Even though it was only 9 weeks old! (Spoiler alert: after the ultrasound, the OB confirmed baby wasn’t 9 weeks + 4 days like we thought, but 8 weeks + 5 days, like my gut told me).

Here, baby has its heard turned to the right, with its right arm over by its left ear. And look at the tiny little feet!! AH!

This is a better shot of that pose. And my favorite of this session. You can actually see outlines of the eyes and nose. Again, so crazy to see these features so early in the pregnancy.

I think this next one was in 4D, and looked a lot cooler on the screen than on the picture:

I wanted to just hold that little thing in my arms and love it. The thing is, it was only the size of a kidney bean at that time.

It would’ve been a little weird holding a tiny fetus that big. So I’m glad I couldn’t hold it.

So those pictures held us over for several weeks. I made copies of them, and put them up at my desk at work, in my wallet, and gave them to each of our moms as Christmas gifts.

Five weeks later, we saw a third provider, the midwife (finally!), and we loved her instantly. Everything looked good, and she scheduled our next appointment, our “around 20 week” appointment, including another ultrasound (YAY!!!!!)

I was actually at 19 weeks + 2 days at this appointment. We invited my husband’s parents, and my mom drove up on her lunch break to join us. I was so antsy in the waiting room waiting for them to call my name! Oh, and this was a full bladder ultrasound, and I’d been drinking water like crazy that afternoon. I was afraid the floodgates were going to open, but I managed to get on the table before I had to go.

This is what it feels like, seriously.

So I was prepared for another “transvag” ultrasound (ew), but this time it was transabdominal. P.S.: ultrasound is a high frequency sound, used in ultrasonography, used to produce an image, called a sonogram. I didn’t know the difference, and had to look it up, so there ya go. Hope you learned something.

The tech quickly looked at a few different things, including the baby (hi baby!), and then had me empty my bladder. I told her I was fine, I didn’t need to go, but she could actually see my bladder, and told me it was FULL. As soon as I stood up, I realized she was right! (This happened twice more, her telling me my bladder was full and I had to jump up and pee really quick).

Here’s some shots of our sweet little Gilly baby (if you haven’t caught on, Gilly is short for Gillespie [our last name], and since we’re not finding out the gender, we’ve I’ve been calling it that. My husband thinks it’s kinda cheesy):

My favorite shot!! Look at that sweet profile, and the heart, and the spine!!

This is a view looking right at the face. That’s the nose and mouth (which I think look like my husband!)

The process was amazing. Being the anatomy nerd that I am, I loved seeing every single part of our baby (except for the sex of it – we wanted it to be a surprise! So we looked away when she looked between the legs). We got to see the hemispheres of the brain, the organs, the spine, and most of the individual bones of the arms, legs, hands, and feet. I love bones, so I just about squealed when she showed us the first femur.

Speaking of femurs… when she went to look at the second leg, she couldn’t find it! She moved the probe around my belly, and then finally said, “oh! it’s up by the head!” I’m glad she took a picture, because it was so cute.

Here’s the head, neck, and chest/stomach, with one of the feet up on the chest.

When she looked for the arms, she found one of them up above the head. I swear, this baby was so wiggly! She asked if I could feel it wiggling right then, and I said no, the wand was right on the movement, and it was hard to differentiate. But by then I had started to feel some flutters, like a goldfish was flopping around in my belly.

This ultrasound took a lot longer than the first one. She measured all sorts of things, like the size of the head, length of the body, and length of the femurs. These were all to make sure nothing was blatantly wrong with the baby. Even though it took a long time, I didn’t want it to end! I just wanted to stare at this baby for hours.

(By the way, after the appointment, our midwife assured us the baby looked perfectly healthy, was in the 75th percentile for size, and was right along schedule. The baby was breach though, but she said it should flip by the time it’s due.)

It was really fun having some of our family with us. I’m pretty sure my husband’s parents didn’t get an ultrasound with him, so they seemed intrigued with every part of it, just like us. My mom had seven kids, and ultrasounds starting with me (the 2nd), so she knew exactly what she was looking at. So there’s a good chance she knows what gender it is, because she didn’t look away when the tech was looking down belowwww. But she’s been a good mom, and hasn’t revealed any hint of what she thinks/knows.

I really wish we had another ultrasound before the baby was born, but if all goes well, we shouldn’t need one. I guess we’ll just have to wait until it comes out before we really see what it looks like!

❤ Katie