Baby Dooley's blogger debut!

Here it is! SHE if you ask me, HE if you ask Mitch. (Girls are better, Mitch. Face it. I don't know what to do with a boy!) TWINS if you ask the grandparents. Especially my mom.

...PS--we're not having twins. I don't think we could handle TWINS + 7 YEARS of school for Mitch. Maybe one or the other, but not both! Plus, we were approved for Medicaid and WIC and we would lose Medicaid coverage on anything "abnormal", meaning a multiple birth!

It was so cool seeing the baby on the screen. I was told by everyone that it would make it more "real." Well, i've been as sick as, well, a very sick person, so everything was every bit real to me. However, it was really cool to see the movement on the screen and everything! Its little shoulders movin' around and its sweet little heart beating so fast. It made me very reassured to hear the midwife say that everything looked great and completely normal (after a nurse scared us to death on the phone...I told her stomach pain--from all the nausea--and she immediately suggested an ectopic pregnancy! NOT COOL!!!)

This is the first picture: they used a "head to rump" measurement (the X's and dotted line) to show us that it measures 1.83 cm!!
I love our little kidney bean! I think the appointment made me love the baby more, if that's possible. Maybe that's how it made it more "real" for me. It made it a person instead of a parasite making me sick and hungry every 2 hours!

Here's a second picture. You can see a little arm bud on each side if you look closely. We are so excited and can't wait for November 6th/7th! (We've heard both as a due date...we've been saying the 7th like the Health Center told us, but the doctor today told us the 6th...it was really a computer telling both of them, so I don't think it matters!) :I thought the internal ultrasound would hurt or be uncomfortable, but it wasn't at all. One second the screen was black and then almost immediately there was a BABY there that we could both see very clearly! We both saw the head and brain right away and we could see the umbilical cord. We've been studying pictures on babycenter.com of what it should look like, and it was a perfect representation!

This is the coolest experience ever! It makes me want to meet this kid! I wonder if it has thoughts before it has a gender. I mean, it has a brain that can tell its heart to pump blood and it already has its major brain parts, but I wonder what makes thought possible? I know its spirit is thinkin away somewhere and I hope its as excited to come here as we are to meet it! :o)