Thinking in PINK!!!

In case you live under a rock haven't heard me shouting from the mountain tops, Dan and I are SO EXCITED that we are expecting a beautiful, healthy little baby GIRL!!!  Those of you who voted in the poll are SO smart...roughly 70% of you said girl and you were right!  I am going to use this post as my 18-week update (but not in the usual format because I have too much to talk about - bear with me!).  Since the war that will result from naming our child has not yet begun, for now we will still call her Baby Geronimo.  It does sound kind of masculine, though, I guess.  Geronimette, perhaps?  We shall see.

Just as I predicted, I did not sleep a WINK last night because I was so excited about today's appointment.  Wednesday is a workout day, so I was up at 5 anyway - at least I was busy doing other things and wasn't just sitting around waiting for the time to SLOWLY crawl by.  Our doctor appointment was the earliest available - 9:30, and by the time it was time to leave I had worked myself into such a state of nervous excitement that I thought I was going to barf.  Not kidding.  Side note: my original plan was to try to not eat before the doctor so that I would weigh less at my weigh-in, but the baby was hungry this morning as I ended up eating 3 times between 5:30 and 9:30.  Whoops!

I had to go to the bathroom practically as soon as we left the house, but I held it because I knew I'd have to give a urine sample when I got to the doctor's office.  When we arrived, they called us back and immediately took us to the ultrasound room, which I was unprepared for - I thought I'd meet with the nurse and weigh in and give my sample first.  I asked the ultrasound technician if I could use the restroom, and she said, "Are you dying?  Or do you think you can hold it?  A lot of times a full bladder makes the baby more likely to cooperate and move around so I can get everything I need."  As any of you who have been following along are well aware, I just KNEW that this baby wasn't going to cooperate today and I wasn't going to get to find out the gender, so while I had to go pretty badly, I wasn't yet dying and decided to brave it (she later told me that she wouldn't have let me off the table until she could figure out what we were having, so it turns out that as usual I was worried for no reason after all).  What I didn't realize was that this ultrasound was the longest one I've had yet - it was probably around 40 minutes long, which I LOVED, but honestly by about the 25 minute mark I was panicking about how embarrassing it would have been to pee on the ultrasound table. Really, have you ever thought about what you'd do in a situation like that, aside from be totally mortified?  Because I was REAL close today.

Anyway, the ultrasound tech took a lot of measurements, and told us that Baby Geronimo (Geronimette?) is fine and perfectly healthy.  It was so neat to see her moving all around in there.  We got to see fingers and toes, the spine, close-ups of the heart (beating strong at 148), her face, organs, etc.  Our little girl had her legs crossed for almost the ENTIRE ultrasound, like so (SORRY for the terrible photo quality - I'm having issues getitng my scanner to cooperate, so I had to take them with my cell phone.  We got like 15 pictures today, way more than usual, but until the scanner cooperates I will just post a few bad quality ones.):

At one point (after we found out the gender), the u/s tech said, "You have a very ladylike little girl!"  Meanwhile, I was sending her brain waives to UNCROSS THEM SO MOMMY AND DADDY CAN SEE YOUR PRIVATES - HA!  Anyway, so there was only about a 30 second period when she uncrossed them, but it was long enough to get a few pictures and confirm that we are having a little girl.  It is also important to note that we have a very active baby on our hands...she was so wiggly that the u/s tech told us (approximately 10 times), "Boy have you got a MOVER, get sleep while you can, Mama."  Why thanks.  That's so reassuring.

Dan was actually the one that figured out that Baby B is a girl.  When she uncrossed her legs long enough that we could see, the ultrasound tech knew immediately but was hesitant to confirm until she got a few more shots.  Dan immediately figured out what he was looking at and said, "So it's a girl, right?"  She said she was hesitant to say she was 100% sure just then, but confirmed shortly after.  I asked Dan if he was disappointed, because he's been so insistent that we were having a boy (he of course is not disappointed at all).  We are both so, so happy - and I cried (again).  Here's the view we got - you may or may not be able to tell that her legs are still only slightly open:

After the ultrasound, the rest of the appointment was pretty boring - I gave my urine sample, weighed in (almost halfway there and only 4 lbs. gained instead of the 10 lbs I was worried about, yeah!), and then met with the doctor for a few minutes.  She told me everything looks great and completely normal, and then I had blood drawn for the spina bifida test and scheduled my next appointment and we were all done!

It has been a very exciting day, and all of the excitement coupled with the lack of sleep and emotions has caught up with me, so I'm utterly exhausted.  I have so much to do tonight - a light cleaning of the house, unpacking from my work trips (whoops, didn't get to it last night) and re-packing for Chicago - which I'm so excited about!  We are beyond thrilled that we are having a baby girl, and I can't wait for the shopping and decorating to begin!  I think the little one already has Daddy wrapped around her little fingers (which were in her mouth the entire time today, by the way - looks like we might have a thumb sucker on our hands).

Since we're going on VACAY, I'm not sure whether I'll be blogging for the next few days.  It really depends on if we have time and how I'm feeling!  Not to worry, I'll for sure be back next week.

Until next time, I'll leave you witha  profile shot - YAY BABY GIRLS!

Sarah