It's A Girl!!!

Yesterday Trevor and I went to a private ultrasound place to find out the gender of our baby. The ultrasound technician took one look at her face and said, "I bet it's a girl. Look at that cute little nose." Sure enough, when he went to check between her legs, there was a whole lot of nothing! I was ecstatic, grinning a mile wide throughout the whole ultrasound. I had begun to feel convinced that we were going to have a boy, so this was a nice little shock! At the beginning of the ultrasound, I think she was sleeping. She had her arms over her face and looked so cozy. But then the ultrasound tech nudged her so that she would roll over onto her side and she wasn't very pleased with that, because she started kicking at me. (It was cool to see, because it's still too early for me to actually feel her movements.)

After the ultrasound we got to tell our parents and siblings, and everyone was so excited for us. My sister-in-law, Lisa, is also having a little girl, so they'll be little girl cousins. Trevor's dad responded to the news by saying, "Looks like we'll be having princess parties."

I'm so thrilled to be having a girl. I grew up with mostly all boys, so I was really hoping for a daughter. Trevor had been hoping for a boy, but when I saw him smiling during the ultrasound, I knew he would be just fine with a little girl. We're pretty sure that we're going to name her Alia (pronounced AW-lee-uh), and the funny thing is, we'd decided on that name for a girl early on, but we were having a really hard time coming up with a boy name...and now we know why. We didn't need it!

The Magical 12 Week Mark

12 Weeks (three months)

They say that once you reach the 12 week mark, your risk for miscarriage drops to less than 2%, which kind of makes it the magical week, so needless to say, I'm thrilled to be here! I had my 12 week appointment today and got to hear my baby's heart beat. It was such a neat experience! The heart beat was about 160-170 beats per minute, which is nice and strong.

Sadly I didn't get an ultrasound. My OB office doesn't do an ultrasound until 20 weeks, which is still two months away. That's a long time to have to wait to see my baby! (I had an ultrasound at 6 weeks just to make sure everything was okay, but the baby didn't really look anything like a baby at that point, so it's not the same.) So...there's this private ultrasound place near where I live and they'll even tell you the gender starting at 15 weeks, but it'll cost $55. Fortunately, I hung on to most of the money I got for my birthday, so I'll call it a belated birthday present and won't even feel bad for spending some money to see my little one. Plus, that means that I can find out if my baby is a boy or a girl in about two and half weeks! That's not NEARLY as bad as having to wait another two months.

Anyway, here's my three month belly shot (I decided to scrap the "continuous outfit" thing because I now have some maternity clothing and it's much cuter than gray on gray). I'm so excited to actually have a baby bump now! It started sometime last week, but now it's definitely here (I actually had to have my doctor confirm it for me today because I hardly believed it myself). I know a lot of first time moms don't start showing until around five months, but then again, I have a ridiculously short torso so I'm not surprised.