Anatomy Scan

A couple of weeks ago we had the second trimester ultrasound, also known as the anatomy scan. This is the exciting appointment when you find out whether you're carrying a boy or a girl. That's what I knew going in. What I didn't know is that this is also the appointment where you get poked and prodded and rolled around for an hour while a technician measures every conceivable part of the fetus. This is made even more uncomfortable by the fact that you have to start off the appointment with a full bladder which you can't empty until they've gotten all their pictures and measurements.

We got the fun part of the appointment out of the way quickly. The kid was upside down, which meant that the initial image was right between his legs. And there was a rather obvious penis, front and center in the ultrasound. We are definitely having a boy.

From there, the technician pointed out various bones and organs. The bones were much more obvious than the organs. The kid has a nicely formed spine and arm and leg bones. Less obvious were the stomach and the brain, which looked the same. The heart was at least beating, but we had to take the technicians words about the kidneys.

Throughout all of this I was rolled to my side, then my back, then my side again. I had to get up and walk around at one point in an effort to make the kid flip head up. And they kept putting more and more goo on my belly. Just when I thought we were done, she had to come back and take additional measurements of the heart.

By every measurement, we had a totally normal kid. So that's something to be excited about. Now we just have to keep our fingers crossed that the head remains reasonably sized. Just a few more months until we can actually see him without the aid of a sonogram!