It's a...

...baby, silly!  We had our 12 week screening today to test for genetic diseases and such.  Neither of us has anything that runs in our families but our insurance pays for it and we got an extra ultrasound out of it so we thought, "What the hell." I, of course, was happy to have another ultrasound to make sure that there was still something in there.  If you've been keeping up with the blog, you know that I STILL don't feel, or look, pregnant.  I'll be 13 weeks tomorrow and am beginning to think that I have better abs than I thought.  They must just be hiding underneath the layer of insulation (haha).

Looks like it's sucking it's thumb - yup, that's my child.

I read in my book that at around 12 weeks you should be able to feel your uterus right above the pubic bone.  I could have sworn that I felt it the other night and had Hub feel around to see if he noticed a difference.  The left side was soft and I could push down pretty far.  On the right side I could only push down a little bit before hitting a firmer area that felt kind of grapefruit-like.  I have read that the uterus pushes up other organs like the bladder before hitting the surface so I wasn't sure if I was feeling the right thing.  My thoughts were confirmed today!

Great thing about getting an ultrasound at this point was that I Ladytown didn't get violated.  I told Hub how excited I was not to be violated again for another year and he quickly reminded me that the child and my doctor are going to violate me in ways that I can't imagine come November.  Ugh.

Again, I am amazed that there is something growing inside me!  So weird!  The tech did the ultrasound from on top of my belly with the squirty gel and everything.  She put the thingie (whatever it's called) right where I thought that I felt my uterus the other night.  Just four weeks ago when we had the first ultrasound the baby looked like a tiny speck.  Now look at it!  We could see the spinal column, heartbeat, fingers, lips, nose and everything!  It was moving around and even looked like it was putting it's hand/fingers in its' mouth.

They told us that we'd only be in there for a few minutes because all the tech had to do was measure the back of the baby's neck, but we seem to have a stubborn baby who wouldn't turn the right way.  She kept bouncing the ultrasound wand thing up and down into my stomach to try to piss him/her off so it'd roll over.  No luck.  She said that from what she could see everything looks like it's growing normally and that they'd just take my blood to test for genetic abnormalities.  She said that I could come back next week because I would still be in the testing window but that there wouldn't be a guarantee then either.  Since they don't do ultrasounds after 3pm we opted out of trying again next week.

Side notes:
-Ultrasound gel is pretty gross.  Not bad while it's on you being used, but pretty disgusting when you're trying to wipe it off.  I'm not going to tell you what I thought of when trying to smear it off with the paper gown, but if you let your mind go there you'll figure it out for yourself.

-Why do they make you drink 16oz. of liquid before your appointment?  She practically made me pee myself when she was using my stomach as a trampoline.  I thought it was so they could see the baby better but today she tried to move the baby around and then let me go to the bathroom to see if it'd move afterward and guess what?  Everything looked the same!  WTH?

-I know most of you told me not to go there, but I'm going again for another stupid example.  Why are there women online saying that their ultrasound tech could determine the sex of their babies at 12 weeks?  Are you kidding me?  I'm calling bullshit there.  We stared at that screen for a good 15 minutes and I could only make out the baby items that I mentioned above.  She-nan-igans I tell you!

And, my friends, that it all I have for now.  Please take a minute and vote in our "boy or girl" poll for funsies :)