Big baby & many goodies for you to look at!

On Monday, we had another doctor's appointment. As I had previously mentioned, we were scheduled to have our first cardiotocograph and third official ultrasound, so I was especially excited.

First, the routine tests were done. Everything was ok, but my iron level dropped a little, so now I am supposed to take an iron pill every day. Ok, not so bad. However, I'm supposed to take them on an empty stomach about 1 hour before breakfast. Hello?!? I'm usually still sleeping then! :) I'll manage, though.

We were then hooked up to the cardiotocograph machine. It took us a while to find Baby's heartbeat since I had no idea how baby was positioned, but when we did, Baby put on a little show. The first 10 minutes, Baby was quite active (there were several kicks against the recorder strapped to my stomach) and the heart rate fluctuated between ~140-180. Up, down, up, down... I had the feeling that baby's heart rate would go up when I said something to the assistant and baby heard my voice, but I'm not sure. Anyway, after about 10 minutes Baby apparently thought the whole thing was boring and decided to go to sleep. After that, the heart beat was back down and quite consistent.

I recorded a few seconds for you to see:
(Turn up your loudspeakers)


After that, it was time for the ultrasound. The doctor did a lot of looking and measuring and came to the conclusion that everything looks good. Hooray! According to the measurements, baby is 40 cm and already 2056 grams!!! That puts baby almost 2 weeks ahead of schedule (I was 30+3 weeks and baby was measuring 32+1)! "Pretty big, pretty strong", as the doctor said. She didn't seem to be worried though. I'm not worried either, but maybe I should cut back on my sugar intake so that we don't end up with a 10-pound baby! No wonder that my stomach is already so big. ;)

Günni even recorded some video during the ultrasound:


Unfortunately, the video is quite small here. Unless you're a doctor or ultrasound technician, you might not be able to recognize much... On the left side, you can see the normal view; on the right side, you see the 3-D version. If you look at the 3-D version, you'll see a foot pop up occasionally (top middle). If you're REALLY good, you'll also recognize that one of the pictures (see below) was taken during this time. That's about all you can clearly recognize because baby was apparently curled up in a ball with all extremities, umbilical cord, and head in one place. The doctor even mentioned that there was "a lot going on in one place". That's also the reason we didn't get a good look at baby's face. The first picture below is the best we could do.


Baby's face - with an arm and ? around it!


On the right, you can clearly see baby's foot


Honestly, I don't know what can be seen in this picture. Perhaps a larger version of the foot in normal ultrasound view???

Finally, I also have 2 pictures of the furniture we ordered for baby's room:


On top, the view in the catalog; on the bottom, the room as it was set up in the store. How fitting that one is pink and the other is blue - hahaha!!!

We ordered the furniture (ONLY the furniture, not the decorations :-p) exactly as they were in the store, plus an additional little shelf to go next to the changing table. They told us that the delivery time is about 3 weeks, so perhaps I can post some new pictures of the furniture in baby's room in about 4 weeks. :)