20w4d Ultrasound

Yesterday was my 20-week ultrasound, commonly referred to in internet forum lingo as "the big ultrasound": the anatomy scan. Our baby's anatomy was indeed scanned, and all body parts accounted for, including the ones our doctors now know but we don't :) Everything looked great, the heartbeat was a healthy 134 bpm, weight was 14 oz, and at least by the measurement of one of the leg bones, the baby is now measuring a week ahead. We got to see the different parts of the brain and the four chambers of the heart pumping away, which was both eerie and fascinating at the same time. We had the ultrasound done with the high risk doctor (as I believe we'll be doing for all of our remaining ultrasounds, as the midwives will just work off their scans rather than redo them on their machine), and he seemed pleased with how everything is going. He also moved me into a low risk category for developing pre-eclampsia (can't remember why, though), which is good since that was one of the concerns with this being an IVF pregnancy.

The baby was all curled up for most of the scan, which you can sort of see in the first image below (and the dark spot in its abdomen is an organ, but I can't remember which one - bladder? stomach?).




We also started childbirth classes yesterday. It feels like it's still so early, but it's recommended to start the Bradley series around 20 weeks, so we're actually right on target. We're in the class with two other couples, one due in June and one in August, all of whom live in Sterling - and coincidentally enough, all of the husbands were engineers of some sort too :) Since this was just the first week (of twelve), it was mainly just introductions and some discussion about nutrition, pain management, and exercises, and then we wrapped up with a movie about different media depictions of birth. Next week's discussion will center around nutrition, so we're supposed to be keeping a log of what we eat each day. So far, it looks like I'm actually pretty close already to what is recommended, as long as nobody looks too closely at the entries with chocolates and red velvet cake :)