A tiny, beating heart

8/9/12

I saw my baby's heart beat for the first time today!!!  Nothing means life more than a beating heart, and nothing means parenthood more than seeing the heart beat for the first time!

We went for our first ultrasound this afternoon after Laura got off from work.  We were surprised to work with someone without interacting with our doctor at all during our visit.  We went into a tiny room with a bed, a couple chairs, and a cart with an A/V cart with a huge screen a sweet looking control pad that might make for a sweet video gaming experience if it weren't in a doctor's office!!!  The process was quite easy (not that I thought it'd be difficult)...at least for me it was easy.  We did two ultrasounds today.  Since we are fairly early on in the pregnancy, the technician said we'd have to do an external and an internal ultrasound to be sure of the measurements and such.  I won't go into details, but Laura wasn't a big fan of one of the ultrasounds!!! 

Throughout the whole process, I had my eyes jumping back and forth between my wife and the screen.  The room was dark and I was trying to gauge Laura's reaction and comfort while constantly shifting my attention to the big screen on the "video game" cart!  I must say, our baby doesn't look like much now, but I was able to recognize it right away!  I've only looked at ultrasound pictures of others about twice in my life, so I had an idea of what I would see...but that little pea-sized, white spec of a bundle of joy anchored to the wall in Laura's tummy was easy to spot against the black void of the baby factory!!! 

At one point the technician said, "this is the fun part!  We get to measure the baby's heart beat!"  After a few seconds, she gave us the good news that the 137 beats per minute of the baby's heart is good and normal!

At the end of a bunch of different measurements and observations, the technician printed a strip of 4 pictures of our baby.  I must say, I have the cutest baby in the world!  I know it definitely is not what it appears to be, but the our baby kind of looks as though it's standing, facing the camera and waving with it's right arm with a smile on it's face.  Don't think I'm stupid...I'm not imagining this...I know it's not what it's doing, but it kind of looks like it!  See below... (To imagine the baby standing and waving as described above, directly left of the arrow appears to be the neck, the eyes and mouth are black specs, and the right arm is the thing to the left in the image)

And with the exciting news that we could see our baby's heart beating, I'll wrap up this latest post in my Daddy Diary.  The technician said the doctor would review the ultrasound and would call us in a few days with the results.  I'll be sure to keep you all posted!  Until the next update, we appreciate your best wishes/prayers for the continued healthy development of our little baby!!!