Secret Ultrasound

A friend, who is a labor and delivery nurse at a hospital I will not name, snuck me in for an ultrasound.

TRICARE is so stingy with ultrasounds that I do not get my first one until 19 weeks. My friend has had about five and she is only at week 17, two weeks ahead of me.

I was sitting at home, catching up on e-mail and deciding whether I should clean or work. I was thinking about baby (of course) and about how, other than hearing the heartbeat almost a month ago, I really do not even feel like this pregnancy is real.

Through some strange psychic connection, my friend calls--would you like to come get an ultrasound? Would I?

I checked with her about a zillion times to be sure she wanted to do this--I did not want to do anything unethical or get her fired! She insisted that she checked with her immediate superviser and everyone was fine with it. Apparently on slow nights they get a little bored there.

So, I drove over about an hour or so ago and they did the ultrasound on me.

Baby is definitely there and definitely alive. On the screen I could seen baby sucking a thumb, waving, kicking, stretching, and generally wiggling around. Truly amazing. She couldn't work the knobs to zoom and focus so we still do not know gender, but I am so happy!

Just like with the heartbeat, it feels so much more real...even more amazing, though, because I saw it with my own two eyes.

I e-mailed DH a scan of the only image that looked like anything printed out--a shot of the profile. I'll post it once DH has had a chance to look at it.

DH just logged on right after I published the post so here is a first look at baby, though the printouts don't do justice to what I saw on the screen!