We woke up bright and early this morning for our 7:30 am ultrasound appointment.  We waste no time – day 1 of 18 weeks and we’re in the office.  As Ellie, our ultrasound tech, warned us that sometimes it’s too early to see everything and we might need to come back, we prepared ourselves for that reality.  However, our little peanut was the perfect model.  Ellie started measuring the head, the heart, the legs, the arms, the spine; she even showed us the ventricles and the aorta within the heart.  We saw peanut’s lips and nostrils up close and personal and learned that baby’s tongues develop quite early in their growth process.  It was educational and fascinating. 

And the news of the day, Ellie could see very perfectly the sex and she announced to us that we’re having a girl!  Yay – so many fun girly things to buy!  No more talking about the different viewpoints on circumcision and no more boy list of names and boy color options for the nursery – full speed ahead girl!  Here’s a pic of our little girl peanut – enjoy:)

On Monday we had our second appointment with Erin, our midwife.  We were there for about an hour and learned all about delivering the placenta, amongst other things.  It was quite a learning experience for Brian and I; I think our jaws were on the ground.  We listened to peanut’s heartbeat, which was at about 140 bpm and Erin said that peanut is quite active in there.  She referred us to Swedish First Hill to get our 18-20 week ultrasound, where we get to find out the sex of peanut!  Swedish called to schedule the appointment and we promptly accepted the first available appointment, on Friday, September 23, the day I’m at 18 weeks.  We’re so excited to find out the sex and start calling our little peanut a he or a she!  As we may have mentioned in person to some of you, Brian had a dream that he met our baby girl and for some reason I’ve always seen our peanut as a boy, so it will be interesting to stop wondering and start narrowing down ideas on names, baby goods, etc.  Today peanut is the size of an onion – photo to come!

Now that I’m in the second trimester, I have more energy and am more interested in getting back into the active groove.  I’m not hitting the gym like I used to – obviously not possible since 1) I haven’t done anything active in the last three months if I didn’t have to, and 2) I’m still pregnant, so it’s not like my body can do the same things as it could when I was not pregnant.  Since gyming it up isn’t on my list of priorities, we’ve been walking around Green Lake quite a bit and I also invested in this hip cool new video from 2002 called The Perfect Pregnancy working.  The instructor in the video is a gymnast in Cirque du Soleil, so as you can imagine I can’t do all of the moves with her level of expertise or flexibility for that matter.  It does make me feel good though that we’re both going through the same obstructions when it comes to certain moves.  It used to be that when I did a push up, my nose touching the ground was an indication of completion; now two (or three) other bumps in my mid-section arrive first.  So Karyne and I have something in common and something that being a gymnast with Cirque du Soleil cannot prepare you for.  I really actually love this video and would highly recommend it for any pregnant woman, or even non-pregnant woman or man.  It allows you to go at an introductory or advanced pace and it feels like the perfect amount of time – 45 minutes including warm up and cool down.  Let me know if you have any other tips on good little pregger workouts; although Karyne is my homegirl, I’m sure I’ll want to mix it up soon!

Peanut's the size of an Orange

…but hopefully it’s a complimentary stealing of an idea.  Brian and I thought it was really cute when we heard that our friends Jon and Molly took a pic of her with the piece of fruit that her baby was the size of, so we admittedly stole their idea.  Sorry guys, hope you don’t hate us for it.  Here’s me with an orange at 15 weeks – that’s approximately the size peanut is right now.