It's A...

First of all, here's how the votes broke down, including those who voted in real life instead of online:
Boy - 5, Girl - 12.  And the winner is??



. . . . . .

GIRL!  

Yep, that's right, we're having a baby girl!  We could not be more thrilled.  We haven't decided on a name yet, so for right now Baby Girl will have to do.  That still feels a lot better than 'he or she'!

I did actually drink all 48 ounces of fluid that I was supposed to, which the ultrasound tech was very impressed by.  I also did NOT pee my pants, which I was very impressed by!  I really almost didn't make it though.  I did go to the bathroom before we left home (shhhh don't tell) and I was in pain by the time I got up on the table!  Luckily, she only scanned for a few minutes before letting me go, and watching the monitor really distracted me from it.  My instructions specified 'non-carbonated' fluids, but I guess I should have gone with all water.  I had a 1/2 cup of coffee (which is less than the Dr. said I am allowed per day) and an entire bottle of vitamin water along with two more bottles of regular water.  Baby Girl was SUPER wiggly and energetic and hard to get good pictures of.  OOPS!  Maybe they should specify to keep the sugar low?  Anyway, chances are she would have been that wiggly anyway.  Seeing that made me feel SO much better about not feeling much just yet.  I have been feeling more and more, but I definitely was not feeling all of those flips!

She also is apparently a little camera shy.  She would not take her hands away from her face for a legitimate profile picture.  I still think the pictures turned out SUPER cute, but the tech wasn't quite satisfied with any of them for the purpose of seeing just the profile.  So, I guess there's a chance we'll have to go back in and have another one done.  I'm not complaining about getting to see her again!  Except that it kind of hurt.  The tech had to be kind of rough with me in order to get Baby Girl into the positions she needed.  She rolled me around, jiggled my belly, everything.  Afterward, my back hurt pretty back and I figure she had nudged Baby into my kidney at some point.  Ouch.  I feel all better now, though :-)

The last thing we noticed about Baby Girl is that she kept fidgeting with her umbilical cord.  Not joking.  While her hands were up by her face, she had ahold of it and was tugging and playing and pretty much just fidgeting with it.  Hmmmm.  I suppose she really must be my child - I've always got to have something for my hands to be doing!

As far as determining her health, we didn't get very far on that front.  Between the tech and the machine, we could tell that she has all of her facial features, both arms, both legs, a nice round head, and fingers and toes. Also, she weighs right around 11 ounces, which is average.  However.  The doctor that I was supposed to see afterward to read the scan and talk to me about her health had been called away to an emergency surgery, so I saw a Nurse Practitioner instead.  She was great, but didn't have the qualifications to read the scan, so we will have to wait to hear about her health.  They will have one of the doctors look over it sometime in the next week or so and then if there are any pressing problems or they need it to be redone because the pictures weren't good enough, they will call me back in for another one.  This was the conversation I was most anxious about having (I didn't really sleep last night) and we didn't get to have it.  But I still feel so much better now that I've seen her.  Of course we won't know anything for sure until I see the Dr. next in October, but I can stop worrying about some of the major medical concerns that were crossing my mind.

Ahhhh!  Ok.  I'm still freaking out a little bit.  I really can't believe we're having a little girl!  Up until this week, I was very neutral.  I really didn't have a preference either way.  Then I woke up on Monday and for some reason thought, 'I really want a little girl.'  So I'm a little extra excited that I still get one, even though I made up my mind at the last minute!  Ok, here's some of the better pictures of my little Baby Girl . . .

Look!  I'm a girl!  She was really modest and made the tech work hard to get a shot of this particular area.  Good Girl!

Tiny little baby toes!

Laying on her side, waving hi to us!  Look at that cute little ear!  The line you can barely make out between her hands and her ear is her umbilical cord that she was fidgeting with.

This is a little hard to make out, but she's laying on her back and we're looking down on her.  She's got her legs crossed and is clearly giving a facepalm.  That's my girl!

The rest of the pictures look cute in person, but didn't scan very well.  I was a little disappointed that we got regular printouts instead of a disc of digital images, but whatever.  I'm not about to complain!  We got to take home 11 different pictures of her, so I'm very satisfied with that!  And that's all for today!  Stay tuned for updates on Little Miss McD!


UPDATE:  Just got a call from the Dr.  They looked at the scan and noticed she is measuring pretty small.  She's all put together right, so there's no genetic abnormalities to be worried about, she's just small.  So they're referring me to get another scan done by an office that specializes in high risk pregnancies to figure out why.  I think that it's just because I'm pretty petite and she takes after her momma, but that's my opinion. He said it's either that or our dates are off and I'm not as far along as we thought.  There is also a slight chance that the placenta isn't delivering nutrients like it should and that's why she's not growing well.  He said not to worry about anything at this point and just to wait and see what the other office says.  They will call tomorrow and set up an appointment for me.  Guess we'll get a second chance to see her after all!  Please keep all three of us in your prayers for an easy answer to these questions!