This is not much of a belly shot this week, but I decided to give my photographer a bit of a break. She’s not hit a bedtime hour one single time this week – between the Cards game on Monday and the delivery of a truckload of donations that we hauled over to set up at a junktique sell at our church last night, we’ve been on the go. The belly is about the same this week, but the shape changes a lot as the baby moves around to find more comfortable positions. And speaking of that baby…
…there’s that sweet little head. We had an ultrasound on Tuesday to take a look at the fluid level around the baby (I had low fluid with E) and they wanted to start a bit earlier in the monitoring. Things looked pretty good this time around – they were looking for the magic number of 10, and we were just above that. We got a free pass for a few weeks, but will begin weekly monitoring after that so we’ll be seeing a lot more of this little one then. After checking and rechecking the numbers, we got to stick around for a little show. Not only was the baby awake, but it was opening and shutting its eyes and mouth – little gestures that reminded us of the way a baby looks right after they wake up and they are just peacefully looking around the room checking things out. We knew from our pregnancy journal that the eyelids were no longer fused, but it was still so strange to see the eyes open and moving. I’m not sure what there is to “see” in there, and the baby has no way yet to process images – but it is clearly practicing all those reflex movements that will help it figure out this world once it enters it. Towards the end of the show the baby yawned the sweetest, most perfect little yawn. It made all those kicks and jabs and uncomfortable moves in the night a little less bothersome once we saw that little one just gently moving and adjusting to its shrinking environment. Why should I complain or gasp every time one of these movements throws me off balance or connects with some tender organ of my own – look at this sweet little thing in there, just practicing those muscle movements and trying to find some space?
And then it swiftly kicked that ultrasound wand right off my belly.
Oh, it is sweet, no doubt, but the soccer movements could wait a few more weeks in my opinion…
Front of face (sideways with forehead on your right, eyes and mouth in shadow)
Bones of one leg (knee joint in the top left hand corner). The leg length and activity have gotten comments at all the later ultrasounds.
How precious!