well hello, baby!

Here's a much overdue update!

Today we had our level 2 ultrasound at KU-Med with the perinatologist. From what they could tell, our child does not have any recognizable birth defects and his/her heart looks like it's in great shape. The heart beat was 140 bpm. They do want us to come back in 4 weeks to repeat the echocardiogram on the baby because they were able to obtain all the measurements they needed today except one to completely rule out any congenital heart defects. Jordan and I don't mind- it means we get to see more pictures of the baby! Below are three of the 3D ultrasound pictures they took for us today. For some reason they didn't give us any of the 2D ones.

Here's the baby's profile, with his/her arms up in the boxing position.

Here's the baby's profile again, with his/her head turned away from us. It is a nice view of his/her arms and leg, though!

Here's one showing the baby's eye, nose, mouth and right armand, here's one of me (at 20 weeks 5 days).

It was so nice to see the baby on the ultrasound. Our only other ultrasound so far was at 6 weeks, which was definitely exciting, but not as interesting as this one. It was so cool to see the major anatomical structures on our little baby. Though we were given the opportunity, we did not find out the sex of the baby. The technician did look, however, and confirmed that all was normal.

I do have some new symptoms to report. It is growing increasingly difficult for me to get comfortable while sleeping. I think this has a lot to do with the fact that I prefer to sleep on my back and I'm not supposed to do that while pregnant, since my ginormous uterus can compress my IVC (a major vein returning blood to the heart) and cause problems. But, thankfully, my mom just sent us a snoogle pillow that has really helped!
Another symptom: heartburn. Ouch! I experienced this for the first time while visiting my sister, brother-in-law and their new baby in Georgia this past week while out to dinner for pizza. Thankfully they had some Tums on hand, and so do I, at home.

And, most wonderfully, for the first time since the 8th grade, I moved up a bra size! While shopping in general is usually something I despise and bra shopping in particular is usually traumatic for me, I have to admit this adventure went pretty smoothly and I'm proud to have upgraded out of the junior's section. ;)

Our next OB appointment is next Thursday, but I'm sure we'll have another update before then. I start orientation tomorrow for my hospital rotations. My first clerkship is Internal Medicine and will last 8 weeks. Man, how time flies!