20 week anatomy scan

The big news we have from this week is that we did the 20 week anatomy scan, and Doglet is doing awesome!

Of course, the appointment came at a bit of an unfortunate time because I had two submissions due last week, including one on Friday. However, since my co-workers know now, I could tell them in advance about the appointment and set a hard cut off time for when I had to stop working on Friday. As a result, the seismic forces on our California building for this 65% submission are lifting it up into the air and throwing it down violently, but that can be dealt with later. 

The 20 week anatomy scan is a big deal- it lasts a lot longer than the 12 week ultrasound so you can enjoy the images of your baby more. And, if you want, you can find out the gender, which we did...

Here is the car trip to the appointment, pondering what the gender will be:

I will not reveal the gender just yet until all parties have been told, but I enjoyed how the ultrasound technician told us. She asked us very clearly at the beginning of the appointment if we wanted to know or not, and throughout the 20 minutes or so she was taking measurements, she didn't mention anything about the gender. I was nervous and not sure how she was going to tell us, so I didn't say anything, but I kept thinking that she must know already and hadn't told us yet. When we got to the end, she asked us again for confirmation that we wanted to know the gender, and we were like YES. Then she put up an image of the baby on the screen, wrote It's A...she hesitated for second...and then revealed it. Jubilance can only describe how happy we were in that appointment. 

The baby is healthy and doing well. In fact, the baby is a bit rotund, so I have started calling it variations of Little Chunks instead of Doglet now. There's always something to worry about, and I felt like my bump was growing rather slowly, so it was a relief when we learned that the baby is actually quite big- it is in the 88th percentile of weight based on their estimates. They said at 90% the baby is getting to be too big, so we are just below the cut off 😅 I know it's just an estimate, but when I saw how big this baby's belly is, I believed it...its belly and its head are the same size....it really kills me. I must have looked at this picture 100 times to get another good laugh. Little chunks is squirrelling away all of my food into its belly for the winter or something. 

I also learned that I have an anterior placenta, which means that the placenta is attached to my uterus towards my stomach. It's more common for the placenta to attach in the back or at the top. Who knew? I always thought the cord would attach near my stomach, I guess because the umbilical cord is attached to the baby's stomach, and it seemed like it would be more of a tummy to tummy connection. But apparently the placenta can drift around the uterus and won't necessarily stay there. The internet says "It is unclear why different placental locations occur but it is speculated that the placenta tends to favor growing toward the top and back of the uterus because it increases access to those blood vessel-rich areas." So hopefully it will float away soon.

Another reason I had slight worries (even though there was no reason to) was that I hadn't felt any definite movements yet, and I read that you can start feeling those around week 18. I also read that from having an anterior placenta, you may feel movement later because the placenta is blocking your stomach, so that solves that. However, it seems like a total coincidence, but when we got home later that night, Zach and I were lying on the couch and I felt a fluttering in my stomach, and then another one. His arm was kind of lying across me, so I moved it to see if I still felt anything. I'm positive those were the first real movements I felt, because I ended up feeling those flutters all weekend. It's a very pleasant feeling, kind of like a tickle in your belly that doesn't actually tickle. I think I had felt a few sensations like this earlier in the week but this was definitely the most clear. Pretty funny it happened on the same day as the big appointment. 

After the anatomy scan we had an appointment with a midwife, and then were starved, so we went to Little Sesame downtown to get some fuel for Chunks. I was still so excited from the appointment I didn't even realize that I was holding the long roll of ultrasound shots, and when I went up to order at the outdoor counter, the guy working there must have known what he was looking at because he asked if it was a boy or a girl. I was so taken aback. So the Little Sesame employee was officially the first person to know the gender, haha. 

We ordered and a few minutes later, a different guy called out our name to get the food. He had a container of ice cream in his hand that he said was a gift from the guy we ordered from. How nice! So we took our food to Farragut park and had a little picnic in the grass.  It was a gorgeous day outside, except there were a lot of pigeons running around.

Afterwards, we hightailed it over to Fairfax for a swim. All in all, one of the most solid days that will ever go down in the books. Just very, very happy.