Ultrasound Pics...better late than never

I finally got some the pictures scanned from our last ultrasound a couple of weeks ago. I was 20 weeks, 5 days at the time. The baby was so big that he couldn't fit in one picture, so we have a lot of pictures of different body parts.

Spine & Ribs

4 Chambers of the Heart

Split screen of the Feet

Brain

Split screen of Arm Bones (check out the foot up by the arm on the right half of the picture)

Face Profile (with hand up by mouth)

Jen's Wedding

I made a super-short trip home last weekend to be a bridesmaid in Jennifer Parks (now Jennifer Hooker)'s wedding. It was exhausting, but I'm so glad I was able to be there for the big day. Jen and Brian looked great, and you could see so much love and happiness on their faces. (I spent a lot of the ceremony trying not to cry!) Didn't bring my camera, but here are a couple of photos from my dad.

Doctor Visit

We went to the doctor and sonographer today for our big halfway point visit. I'm going to keep this post brief, because I have to go pack for my trip home to Jen's wedding, but the doctor visit went great! All of the baby's body parts looked like they're developing appropriately, and he's still measuring a week older than my due date. Sonographer said 99% chance it's a boy. The coolest part was probably that the baby had the hiccups during the sonogram, so we could see his chest hiccupping!

Here's the growing belly!

We got a copy of the sonogram on DVD and tons of photos, but I didn't have time to scan them at school this afternoon. So, I took a quick photo of a couple of them...not good quality at all because of the shiny paper, but you can get the idea for now.

This is a picture of the baby's profile. There's a hand up by his mouth...maybe sucking his thumb?

And I like this one...cute split-screen shot of the two feet.

Once I get back from the trip, I'll see about trying to scan these photos and more so you can get a better view. Off to pack now!

19 Weeks and Counting...

19 1/2 weeks now. Feeling great overall, but still a relatively petite "bump." But, the kids in my class are starting to notice it. Some of them really like to touch my belly and talk to it- very cute. One little girl asks me multiple times every day, "How big is the baby now?" I've been trying to explain that it gets bigger every day, but very slowly. She looked at me yesterday, very seriously, and said, "Mrs. Dennison, I think you need to eat more. It's not big enough yet." The kids also think that the baby literally eats what I eat, because it lives in my belly. I'm going to let them keep thinking that, because I'm not about to explain about my uterus, placenta, umbilical cord, etc.

I'm stuck in HK alone this week. Nate is at a conference in DC. Luckily, he will finally come home Monday night after 8 days away. He figured this would be his last chance to go to a conference for a while, which is right because I'm not letting him out of the country alone again until our child is off to college. (Kidding.)

I've been feeling the baby move everyday for the past week or two. I guess that's an advantage of being on the smaller side-- there's less between me and the baby, so I can feel it more. According to what I read, the baby should be around 6 inches long from head to bum and weigh 8 oz. right now. At 20 weeks, it switches to head to heel length, because the baby's body is finally straight enough to measure the full length. The baby should be around 10 inches(!!!) and weigh 10.5 oz! So exciting!

It's hard to believe I'm half way there!

The Belly

So here it is...the belly. I don't usually wear shirts that show it off this well, but of course I had to for the photos! Still quite small, but maybe I'm finally kind of starting to look pregnant? Mind you, I just got another comment last night of, "Wow, you can't even tell!" And my TA's husband still doesn't even believe I'm really pregnant! All in due time, I guess.

Cool baby info for this week: The baby now has fingerprints, and crown-rump length is just over 5 inches. (From what I read, most doctors start measuring crown-heel length around 20 weeks onward.)

17 Week Update

We went back for another doctor visit this week. The doctor did a quick ultrasound just to check that everything looks good (and it did). We don't have a lot of good photos, but here are a couple to check out. The baby was upside down, so you can see the head at the bottom and part of the chest above that. In the top picture, you can see the eye, nose, and lips quite well.

We also had some really amazing views of an arm and leg. We could see all of the bones! Unfortunately the doctor didn't take a picture of those, because she was too busy looking for the baby's private parts. The umbilical cord was right between the baby's legs, so she couldn't get a very good shot, but she feels pretty sure it's a....drumroll please...BOY! No big surprise there since the Dennison men seem to only be able to produce boys. Good thing I'm a big fan of Carolina blue! :)

We go back at the very beginning of December for our big scan done by the sonographer to check all of the growth and development. We should be able to see some pretty amazing things by then, as well as hopefully getting a stronger confirmation of the gender. We can also get that scan on DVD, so we can share it with family at Christmas! How awesome is that?

As for me, I'm feeling way better over the last few weeks. The nausea is probably 95% gone, and I have significantly more energy. I'm finally starting to show, but I guess I'm pretty small for how far along I am, so I get a lot of, "You're how far along?!? Wow, you're hardly even showing!" That's kind of frustrating, because I am looking forward to being large enough that I'm clearly pregnant and not just fat in the belly area. I'll try to take a new belly photo soon and post it so you can decide for yourself!

Koh Lanta

Our second destination in Thailand was Koh Lanta, a two hour van & ferry trip from Krabi. We stayed at a very nice resort, as accommodations are much cheaper than in the US, Europe, or HK. Below was the view from our porch.


One of the highlights of our time in Lanta was a day-long 4 island tour. We spent the day riding around in a boat between islands, snorkeling and swimming through a cave. Unfortunately we don't have photos of the snorkeling or the cave, because we obviously couldn't take the camera i the water. But trust me, we saw some very cool fish and huge coral reefs! We saw angel fish, clown fish, a big eel, and a lionfish that had all kinds of fins and things sticking out from it. This is a picture of a lionfish I found online:


It was the only cloudy day we had while we were in Thailand, but this was quite possibly a good thing because we didn't get a bit sunburned!


My stud-- uh, I mean husband-- on the beach.

Typical view from the roads around the island.

The next photos are from our elephant trekking trip. The whole elephant trekking thing is a bit cliche if you ask me, but I couldn't pass up the chance because I quite like elephants. I read in our guidebook that it's actually good for the elephants because they were banned from working in certain parts of Thailand, like Bangkok, so tourists like us help support the elephants so they can live in remote areas and don't have to be put down.
This is a view from a clearing in the "jungle" where we were trekking.


Nate feeding bananas to our elephant after the ride.

Our elephant driver.

The baby elephant can do tricks!



One of my favorite parts of our entire trip to Thailand was kayaking through the mangroves and stumbling upon some wild monkeys! We fed them bananas. There was a whole family of monkeys, and they had surprisingly large teeth.





Here are a couple of photos of our resort. Lovely.

Infinity pool with the ocean in the background-- gotta love that!

Bangkok

For our trip to Thailand, we spent half of the time in Bangkok and half of the time in Koh Lanta. I'll do the posts in two parts so they're not gigantic. Bangkok was a place that I think I appreciated more the longer we stayed. Nate and I both felt like the more we saw of Bangkok, the more we got the sense that there was a lot we hadn't seen. We had luxurious accommodations. We stayed at the Sofitel, where service was amazing and they had L'Occitaine toiletries! Only complaint: the bed was hard as a rock, but this is common in Asia. Check out some of our photos below.

One of the markets near the Grand Palace. Check out all that food at this vendor! Unfortunately, I had to avoid the street food this trip, because it could be really dangerous for the baby if I were to get food poisoning. That also meant not drinking the tap water (or ice), and only eating fruit and veggies that had the peel/rind removed or were cooked. Kind of sad, but not worth the risk right now. Instead, we had plenty of good Thai curries at restaurants!

These next several photos are from the Grand Palace. It is even more glitzy and intricately detailed than it looks in the photos!

I had read that there are strict rules about what you wear at temples in Thailand, but this place took it to another level. From what I had read, I thought I would be okay in a shirt that didn't show my shoulders, capri pants that didn't show my knees, and close-toed shoes, but alas the capri pants showed too much of my ankles. So, they lent me a long wrap skirt to wear over my capris. It was about a million degrees, mind you, so I was sweating profusely in all of these clothes.

Nate and I went to a gigantic weekend market on Saturday. I'm talking so big we got lost and couldn't find our way out. Seriously. Anyway, they sell anything and everything you could possibly imagine at this place. It was pretty incredible. They had trinkets, food, fake flowers, furniture, clothes (new and used), electronics (mostly used), soaps, fabrics, housewares, Thai massages, jewelry, and a huge pet section. The photo above is from the pet section (my favorite part, of course). Yes, those are tiny little baby bunnies dressed up in costumes. I'm not kidding. I'm not sure how much they were selling for-- I should have asked! The photo isn't very good, because there was a sign saying "no photo" so I had to snap it really fast when no one was looking. Really, the photo doesn't due justice to the hilariousness of the bunnies. There were also tons of puppies and kittens, fish of all sorts, reptiles-- even an alligator/crocodile that was about two feet long! Most of the animals weren't in proper cages, so you could just pet them all as you walked by. I'm pretty sure that the animals who didn't survive the heat were cooked and sold in another part of the market. (I'm kidding...kind of.)

Classic tuk tuk photo. We didn't ride in one, because taxis were plenty cheap. Taxis, interestingly, were all sorts of bright colors-- hot pink, green, yellow, electric blue, red, orange, etc. You can't miss them!

We're Pregnant!

Nate and I found out on our anniversary, August 5th, that we're pregnant! The best anniversary gift ever!

Here are photos from our last ultrasound on Sept. 30th, when I was just under 12 weeks. This was a special doctor visit, at which we had our Nuchal Translucency Scan. The NTS checks for Downs Syndrome based on measurement of the baby and my blood test. We were very excited to get back super good results, that our baby has a 1 in 17,000 chance of having Downs.

We got to see amazing pictures of the baby during the ultrasound. The baby was moving all around- kicking its legs, wiggling arms, and turning around in my belly. Unfortunately, the pictures we have (below) aren't nearly as clear as what we saw on the monitor, but you get the idea. We also got to watch the baby's heartbeat on the monitor. The heart rate was in the 160's, which sounds really high but is perfectly normal for a fetus of that age.

This photo is a side view of the baby's head and chest. You can see the nose and jaw bones forming (where it's brighter white).

I think this picture is especially cool. It is looking down on the baby, with the head toward the bottom left and the arms and legs going up toward the right.

This is a double shot of the baby's hands. Check out the finger bones!

This last photo is a side view of the whole baby (head on the right side). You can glimpse the hands up near the head. At the time of the photo, the baby's crown-rump length was over 2 inches long, but by now it should be around 3.25 or 3.5 inches!

Jessica & Brett Visit HK

We were really lucky to have Jessica and Brett come visit last week. It was a great week (but busy). We did as much sightseeing as time allowed and enjoyed lots of quality time together. Here a few photo highlights of the trip.

We took cable cars to go see the Big Buddha on Lantau Island on a rainy afternoon

Looking down from the cable car as we went up and over the mountains

Jessica & Brett walking up the stairs to the Buddha

One of the statues at the top, near the Buddha (I like the misty cloud in the photo)

Walking around the back of the Buddha with Nate

The Big Buddha

Po Lin Monastery

With the sis

Offerings inside the monastery

Scary...

Hiking the Dragon's Back trail

View from the Peak at night

So...who's coming to visit us next?? :)