Sweet relief

Since I got my BFP, I've been cautious and wouldn't allow myself to get to excited or plan for the baby because I was so afraid something would go wrong. Even though everything looked fine on my six week ultrasound and we saw the heart flickering, I wouldn't let myself get too excited. It's weird to think that there's really a baby growing inside you when you can't see, hear or feel any of it. I have had very mild symptoms - just slight nausea, food aversions & cravings, and tender nipples. They're mild enough that if I didn't know I was pregnant, I probably wouldn't really notice them.

As you can imagine, the countdown to my NT scan was agonizing because I'm super impatient, and because I was so anxious and excited to see our baby looking like an actual baby, rather than a little blob. I was literally counting down the days and they could not have gone by fast enough. Finally, yesterday was the day. And it was fabulous. I teared up when I saw our baby for the first time. It was so surreal. And it was the greatest feeling to find out that so far, everything looks great! Baby is measuring another 2 days ahead (12w instead of 11w5d), but it won't change my due date. We got 6 photos printed and a DVD of the whole scan. =D

Here's baby, waving at the camera (you can see 3 fingers above the nose):


We definitely want to find out the gender because we're totally planners and we want to be able to decorate appropriately. There's a theory about the "angle of the dangle" where you can determine the baby's sex at about 12 weeks. In females, the nub points down at less than 30° relative the the spine. In males, the angle is greater than 30°. Here's our first look:


The arrow points to the nub, which clearly looks girly. It looks just like the girl photo from the website I linked to above. This image was taken by the tech. After she did the whole scan, the doctor came in and asked if we wanted to know the sex. We said we thought we knew so he took a live look and snapped this image:

Doh! Now baby is looking like a boy! He looked again and baby moved and then looked girly again. Plus, the doctor said that the heart rate (which was 165bpm) made him think it was a girl because he said girls tend to have higher heart rates. So now we just don't know. We'll find out in another 4 weeks for sure when we have a 3D ultrasound. Yet another thing for me to countdown to!