Ultrasound

 We had our 18th week ultrasound appointment today. I'd been with Jfer to most of her meetings but this was was the coolest so far. The sonogram setup is pretty neat -- the acoustic sensor is hooked up to a machine that converts the ultrasound to a grayscale image. That is then displayed on a computer which allows the technician to make measurements (point and click), to annotate them (i.e. femur length) and to transfer the images and data to yet another computer for later review. There is also a VCR that you can tape the images on. I made a QuickTime movie form our tape, but you can't see all that much in it.

After the nurse put some gel on Jfer's belly, she did some measurements on her organs (splotches in different shades of gray) and then moved on to Junior. Often it was rather hard to make out what we were looking at, but at times the images were very clear. We got a good look at almost everything (we didn't look when the nurse was checking out the privates). It's pretty neat when you see the beating heart, ribs, fingers and profile of a face. Some of it looks rather freaky -- especially the frontal view of the face (I told Jfer that she's carrying Skeletor), since what you really see is a cross-section of the bones. At times, Junior was pretty active moving his arms and legs. He or she also looked rather cramped.

The nurse said that everything seemed to check out fine. She took a ton of measurement and each measurement displayed the estimated age of the fetus -- they all were between 18 weeks and 4 days and 19 weeks.

I must admin, it was a bit surreal standing there and watching my progeny on the screen. Jfer thinks that she felt the baby move for the first time on Sunday at the movies. I don't really have that connection yet, but I'm looking forward to it. I can understand why some people go out and get a non-medical 3D or 4D ultrasound.