Yesterday, we had the 20 week “anatomy” ultrasound. It’s a fairly extensive, in-womb check-up, involving the measurement and examination of many different body parts. All in all, I found the experience fairly spectacular to witness. Although, sometimes, I still struggle to fully comprehend that it’s “real.” I’m not sure if that’s a function of infertility struggle or just simply the routine clueless-ness derived from having a penis.

In any case, the baby is doing just fine and right on schedule.

Here are some pictures…

The classic profile in womb:

The baby sucking on its thumb:

The downright amazing (and, might I add, highly cute) 4D face image:

Boy or girl?

This was a real challenge to determine. At first, L’s bladder was a bit too full—obstructed view. She went to pee. Back on the table and jelly-bellied once more, the baby stuck out its tongue (literally) and then crossed its legs. The technician tried poking L’s belly… wiggle, wiggle but still crossed legs. The technician had L recline on her side… still crossed legs. After 10 minutes or so, she gave up and said that we’d try again after the visit with the doctor.

So, we returned to the ultrasound room about 30 minutes later. The legs were still crossed. And, now the hands and umbilical cord were down there too! No luck.

Finally, the tenacious technician suggested a trans-vaginal approach because the baby’s bottom was close to L’s cervix. Insert probe. Look carefully (because of hands, and feet, and cord all in the way).

SCORE! No “frank and beans” present. We’re having a little girl!

This is a big week. On Tuesday, L will reach week #20… the theoretical half-way point on this journey called pregnancy.

Friday will also be interesting. It’s the first ultrasound since the initial one at the RE’s office. In theory, we’ll learn whether or not we’re expecting a boy or a girl (yes, we… or at least L… wants to know). For the record, I don’t have a strong preference. If pushed, I think I’d probably say that I hope for a girl. But, really, I’m just hoping for healthy and happy.

More news to follow later this week…

I’ve pretty much come to the conclusion that until the proverbial bun is closer to exiting the oven expectant fathers have almost nothing to do. I’m not saying that L’s pregnancy has been dragging on forever… only that it’s pretty boring siting in the parking lot at Fatherland waiting for the gates to open. I think it’s one of the reasons—in addition to a lot of travel and work responsibilities—that I haven’t posted a lot on the blog lately. There’s really not a lot to talk about. Pregnancy-wise everything has been (blissfully) normal and uneventful.

In some ways, it’s a lot like the waiting to start IVF. Once the plan was in place and the treatment paid for, we pretty much just sat around and waited for the games to begin. My (online) friend Myndi, who’s getting ready to start an IVF cycle, was commenting on this the other day.

So, here we are: standing around in the kitchen….

She’s waiting for her dough to rise. For my part, I’m waiting for the cinnamon bun to get a little closer to done before I start making the icing and putting on the coffee.

Finally feeling better, I went shopping this weekend with L for maternity clothes! We went to our relatively new neighborhood mall, The Shops at Wiregrass, which I might add that I hate.

(Note: the mall is one of these outdoor “lifestyle centers” that smacks of ill-conceived new urbanism. It’s setup to resemble an ambling street, complete with a gently curving “road” with on-street parking. Of course, the “road” only leads between the parking lot at one end and a parking lot at another. This layout means the “sidewalks” are relatively narrow, causing pedestrian traffic jams as the moronic residents of New Tampa stop to inexplicably gawk at The Gap or whatever, as if it were an unknown and foreign destination. Worse yet, it’s out-of-doors: a hot and humid mass of concrete and asphalt that leaves you a sweaty, sticky mess 9 months out of the year. Give me a good, old-fashioned air-conditioned shopping center a la Mallrats. But, I digress).

However, given its proximity and my laziness, I didn’t want to drive to a more distant destination. Plus, it has a Motherhood Maternity in addition to the department stores that sell prego-wear.

I’m a guy who doesn’t mind shopping. But, I have to say: I did not enjoy shopping for maternity clothing. We started at the JC Penney. It’s not the sort of place L usually shops for clothing at, but any port will do in a storm, I suppose. We actually found some decent pants and jeans there. Better still, they were on sale for 50% off. That made the average price $15-20 per pair. Sweet.

Next, we went to Motherhood Maternity. For me, this is when things went downhill. I was the only dude in the store (it seems that most pregnant women like to shop with their mothers, not husbands). I was inundated with “color commentary” about all sorts of body parts: “my thighs are disgusting,” “I used to be a member of the ‘tiny tity committee’ before they blew up” (blew up? that can’t be good., “my ass is sooo huge,” and so forth. I listened to women talk about spreading their nether regions with cocoa butter and cocoa oil (both are best, it seems). At some point, I started longing for a trip to Victoria’s Secret, my previously least favorite place to shop with L.

I don’t think L loved the experience either. She had a sort of a “deer in headlights” look about her. This was especially true when they strapped the plus-three-months belly onto her. Upon the sight of herself in the mirror, her eyes grew wide to the size of half dollars. I thought she was going to let out a scream. And, she only managed to stammer out answers to the salesperson’s questions. Happily, she found some very nice shirts. I said we should buy them all.

So, all told we managed to get: 4 pairs of pants/jeans and about 7 shirts. Plus, some sort of undergarment and cocoa butter/oil. The told cost came to around $250. Not too bad.

While walking back to the car, L stopped abruptly in the parking lot and informed me we’d order the rest of her maternity clothing online. It seems the strap-on faux belly and talk of thighs was too much for her too. Fine with me.

P.S. I’m posting this entry from 34,000 feet while flying from Atlanta to Dallas. I have a one-day trip that started with me leaving the house at 3:30 this morning. I’m scheduled to land back in Tampa around midnight tonight… long day! The WiFi service on planes is pretty cool… I’m becoming addicted.

Before we left for vacation a couple of weeks ago, L felt like she was getting sick and decided to stay home for a day and rest. She was lucky and able to shake the bug. I managed to pick it up too, but I fought it off during our cruise and thought I had it licked too.

Unfortunately, I was wrong. It came back with a vengeance last week while I was traveling, and it really hit me over the weekend. I’m honestly not sure if it was just a bad cold (possible as I didn’t have a fever), some “regular” variant of the flu (possible as it seemed worse than a regular cold), or a full blown case of “bacon lung” (possible because I’ve read that you can have pork-itosis without having a fever). It seems that doctors have largely stopped testing to confirm cases of the swine flu, as long as you’re doing ok.

Of course, there are numerous media reports about how dangerous the swine flu is for pregnant women. Great! So, we’ve been trying to keep the house and me disinfected while I’ve battled this thing off. I’m (finally!) starting to feel a good deal better, but I’m not 100% yet. I’m hoping to be back into normal form by the weekend (as last weekend was a washout and we’ve got stuff to do). We also had to cancel dinner plans with some good friends, which we’ll need to reschedule for later this month as well.