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We're now in the 23rd week of Mandy's pregnancy, and the bump continues to grow. But as you can see from this picture, my wife is looking just as hot as ever. She's still going to the gym, and getting around without any difficulty, although she has been feeling tired earlier than normal in the evenings.
They say that the second trimester is the best time of pregnancy. So it has proven to be.
Yesterday, Mandy and I went to the hospital for her second ultrasound. This was the big one, the one at which, unless we were very unlucky, we’d learn the baby’s sex.
The ultrasound that Mandy had in week 8 was brief, lasting about 10 minutes. 13 weeks later, however, the baby has grown some. As a result, this one took about 45 minutes.
The first part of it was a bit of a let-down. For some reason, I had convinced myself that I was going to see a beautifully-rendered three-dimensional image of our unborn child. Instead, we were treated to a giddy series of two-dimensional slices through various blobs and splodges, many of which the technician stopped to measure. It was surprisingly difficult to distinguish any part of the baby’s anatomy, except for the spine and ribs. Occasionally a hand or foot would flash into view, before quickly being reabsorbed into blob-land.
Trying to work out what we were looking at was like looking for faces in clouds: you could pretty much see anything you wanted to in the digitised images that waxed and waned with the movement of the scanner. It was easy to convince yourself that any given blob or protrusion was an eye or an arm, only to be corrected by the technician. About the only thing I managed to identify correctly was the placenta, an elongated blob that seemed to occupy a surprisingly large portion of the uterus.
Initially the technician looked at the baby’s internals. She checked out the kidneys and pointed out some clear, dark spots that were apparently the stomach and bladder. She took several measurements of the structures in Junior's brain and then moved the scanner down to check out the heart. She pointed out its four chambers, and measured the heartrate at a respectable 156 beats per minute.
Things got more interesting when she started focusing on the external parts. We had an amazingly clear view of the humerus bone in one of the baby's arms, and as the technican moved down the arm, we could clearly see the radius and the ulna. Watching the baby's hands and feet allowed Mandy to see the baby punching or kicking at the same time that she felt it, which was exciting for her.
Next, we got our first look at the baby's face. And what a handsome baby it is too, just like its dad! Oh alright, so our view was pretty fuzzy. However, we could see its nose and upper lip (the technician confirmed the absence of a cleft palate), and we were amazed to see its lower jaw moving up and down too. Whether it was saying hello to "mom" and dad or just having a refreshing sip of amniotic fluid, I'm not quite sure.
So far, the technician had avoided checking the baby’s sex. The delay was making me increasingly anxious. The baby was moving around quite a lot and I was worried that it would cross its legs before we could see whether it was a boy or a girl. But finally, the technician began zooming in on the baby's nether regions. I held my breath.
A small protrusion appeared on the screen. "That looks like a penis," the technician said. I squinted at it. It was pretty small. How could she be sure?
She pointed to a vague outline behind, which she tentatively identified as the scrotum. It would be easier to confirm later in the pregnancy, she said, once the testicles had descended.
This wasn't the categoric assessment that I had been expecting, and I found myself getting frustrated by her hedging.
“So how confident are you that it's a boy?” I asked.
“50%” she replied.
50%?! If there’s only a 50% chance it’s a boy, then there’s a 50% chance it’s a girl too – and we could have told her that several months ago. In hindsight, I wish that I'd challenged her, but I didn't. As a result, I left the hospital feeling deeply unsatisfied.
Our other regret was not asking for more printouts during the course of the scan. All the ones we got were similar-looking shots of the baby's head and upper body. It would have been nice to take away some pictures of its tiny hands and feet, its bones, and its questionable manhood too.
We're unlikely to get another chance to learn the baby's sex. Mandy won't get any more ultrasounds now unless there's a medical reason to do so. Looks like I’m going to have to go through both lists in the baby name books, after all.
You can see all the ultrasound pictures we were given here.
