Stalked by the paparazzi

We're starting to realize that Miss Speck is not a fan of having her picture taken. People go to a lot of trouble to record every facet of her development, and she just doesn't cooperate. Like today, for example. Very important milestones needed to be confirmed, and she did her best to make everybody beg for it. She rolled around and flipped and put her arms over what they were trying to look for. But we did get some good shots.

Work with me here...
OK, if you squint a little you can see a big blob that is her head, looking at you (kind of scary, we know). The one little floating circle on the left is her right hand, and her other arm is folded over her chest. She spent most of the exam with her arms up around her head like that, much to the chagrin of the sonographer.

Another head shot. Top of her head is to the right, and the pointy part on the left is her chin. Her nasal cavity has formed, as have her eyelids and ears. Evidently, this is a good picture. We'll take the tech's word for it. She's beautiful :).

Profile! How cool is this!? The white spot above her head is her hand, in a gesture of drama and exasperation (she is my kid, after all...). Look at that little button nose. CUTE.


Another profile, and she's looking away now. You can see more of her torso, and that black spot is her heart. The tech looked at her heart quite a bit, and all four chambers are pumping furiously (136 bpm today...). The sonogram machine has a function that adds color to highlight bloodflow, so this one was all lit up blue and red. Super cool, that.


This is her right foot. The smaller blob behind it is her left foot. She crossed one behind the other like I do. Awww...

So that's where we are today, at 22 weeks. Speck has 10 fingers and 10 toes, and we also got to rule out spina bifida, which is what happens when the skin doesn't cover the spine (there's more to it than that, but visible spine with no skin is a big indicator of Bad Things Happening). Today was also really cool because I could feel her moving around while watching her move on the TV screen. It's just overwhelming. She weighs about 1 pound 1 ounce, and she's about 8 inches long. She's still measuring right where she should. We also re-confirmed in no uncertain terms that she is most assuredly a girl.

I'm back at the perinatalogist in 10 weeks. While I'm bummed that we won't have any new episodes of the Speck Show until November, this means that there's nothing that they're monitoring us for, no issues that we're anticipating, no reason to hurry back. She's healthy and growing, and there's nothing more that we would wish for.