20 week doctor appointment!

20 weeks, 1 day

Weeks ago, I thought that this doctor appointment would never get here. It felt like an eternity until we would be finding out if Baby T was a boy or a girl. Fast forward to a few days ago and man, did time fly by!

We walked into the office and I was pleasantly surprised at the small amount of people. I checked in and took a seat next to Joe in the waiting room. We had this cute boy who was climbing all over the tables and talking about trains next to us. His mother was trying to distract him and he was oblivious to it all. I made a mental note to try to avoid bringing my kid to the doctors office if I didn't have to. (Yeah, I'm laughing at myself too.)

Shortly, Julie the tech called us back into the ultrasound room. (She was my favorite tech from our last visit so I was glad to have her.) The first thing she asked me was if I was comfortable and needed to go to the bathroom. Ironically, I told Joe as we were walking into the office that I had to go bad (shocking, I know) but somehow once we got into the room, I was fine. I didn't want to take the time when we were so close to getting a view of the babe. Of course, the first thing Julie says is wow, that bladder is full!

I'm getting ahead of myself. Before we started, we let Julie know that we wanted her to put the gender results in an envelope for us to open later this weekend. She said that would be no problem and we were good to go.

She started off by getting pictures of the profile and checking the positioning of the baby and my placenta. At this point, baby is breach but I have plenty of time for him/her to move. I have an anterior placenta which is good. We got measurements for the cerebellum and other ventricles in the brain and then she made sure to get a good picture of the upper lip. Why the upper lip, I'm not really sure. Next up was the heart and measuring and identifying the 4 ventricles. You could see them opening and closing very clearly. She measured another strong heartbeat at 141bpm. She continued on down the body and it was about this time that baby started going crazy. Julie was cracking up over it. I guess we have a roller and a shaker. She warned me that I would be feeling some strong punches very soon.

Shortly after, she started having trouble measuring the kidneys. She eventually got them and I found out later when meeting with Dr. Bennett that they are dilated a bit so they are going to monitor them at my next appointment just to be safe. I'm not worried as I've read this is a problem that will fix itself as time goes on. Since my appointment was in the middle of the morning, I had not eaten much that day....just breakfast and my morning snack. Julie wanted to get a look at the stomach when it was full or at least fullish so I get to have another ultrasound for my 24 week doctor appointment. This was supposed to be my last one of the pregnancy but they need to go back in to check again. Sounds good to me!

As she moved her way further down, she made sure to get the umbilical cord from a few angles. She also had to identify the two arteries and one vein within the cord. The vein supplies the baby with oxygen and nutrients while the arteries remove the deoxygenized blood. We're good to go there. She also got measurements and pictures for the legs and feet.

It's crazy how quick she moved her way through everything. Most of it looked like a big blob until she pointed something out but then it was really easy to tell what was going on in there. Joe has been making fun of Julie since the appointment because she was a little...shall we say, bubbly. He thought she was very entertaining, that's for sure. After getting everything she needed, she had us close our eyes and she snapped a few pictures of the goods. I will admit that the entire ultrasound I was not trying to peak but once she told us to close our eyes, I contemplated counting the number of keys she hit to type on the picture just to see if I could guess. Alas, I didn't cheat. I still have no idea what Baby T is.

The rest of the appointment was spent doing the normal checkup. Blood pressure was 117/77. Weight is still down 1 pound for the pregnancy but the same as my last appointment 3 1/2 weeks ago. No blood draw this time!

So overall, mostly good stuff. Didn't have a perfect ultrasound but all that means is I get to have another one! Pictures are printed but they are stashed away with the gender results. We find out if we will have a son or daughter tomorrow!