My OB Appointment Today

As I said in my last post, today I had a scheduled ultrasound to check on the baby’s size and position. The result: her size is normal and her position is head down.

At this point, I am not surprised that she is head down. For the past week, I have had increasing pressure in my pelvic area, and less frequent/less severe heartburn than what I was having just a couple of weeks ago. Both of those can sometimes be indicators that a baby is head down and lying low in the abdomen.

As for size, she is well within normal range, although with a somewhat large abdomen. The ultrasound tech took measurements and then showed them to me on a graph. The graph had a red line that marked what the 50th percentile measurements are. Then there were two green lines — one was above the red line and marked measurements that are above (bigger) than the 50th percentile, and then the other green line was below the red one and marked measurements that were below (smaller) than the 50th percentile. Then a white x indicated where our baby girl was for each measurement. The tech said that you always want the x to be somewhere within the two green lines. Luckily, all of her measurements were within that range.

Her head? Almost right on the red line, i.e. the 50th percentile, i.e. a totally average head size.

Her abdomen? Above the red line… 91st percentile! But still within the green line range.

Her femur? I don’t know what the percentile was, but it was BELOW the red line. No surprise there, though!

But of course, the most important question going into this ultrasound was DOES SHE HAVE HAIR? And the answer is yes, she does! Without my asking, the tech pointed to some white strands floating on the screen and said, “Do you know what that is?”

“Hair.” I responded.

“Yes.”

“A lot of hair?” I asked.

“Well, let’s see,” she said. She pointed to one area and said, “It’s common to see hair in this spot here,” and then she moved the wand around on my belly to look all around and said, “But she’s got hair all over.”

It remains to be seen, though, whether she will have as much hair as Emrick did. I seem to remember that with Emrick, the tech had not only pointed out the hair to us, but had also remarked that it was a lot. And that was two weeks earlier in the pregnancy than this was. In any case, we can’t wait to see her!

Since I cannot do a post without pictures, here are some pictures of Emrick taking a bath. Can you guess when these pics were taken? Warning: It will take a genius to figure out the answer.

And here are some pictures from after a more recent bath:

No product here. That’s just what Emrick’s hair does after a vigorous drying by hand towel.