If you are reading the titles of my postings, then you are already aware that today we learned the gender for the baby...we are having a baby girl! I am over-the-moon ecstatic. :) The doctor we saw in Dallas today said that through his scans on the ultrasound there were no signs of Down's syndrome. There is still a chance that she could be born with Down's because sometimes babies with Down's syndrome appear normal on ultrasounds. That is really not a concern of mine though. I am going with the optimistic view that everything looked fine.
Okay, on to what happened at the actual appointment. And I found out that a Level 2 ultrasound doesn't use any type of specialized machine; it's called that because of the level of training the sonographer has completed. The doctor performing the sonogram is very highly trained. He started by measuring the circumference of her head and looked at different parts of her brain. Then he measured the circumference of her abdomen and showed us where her stomach is. It was also very clear where her spine was as well. WE got to see each of her arms and her hands. One hand was closed up into a fist, which was very cool to see because it was obvious what her fingers were doing! He showed us both of the legs and at one point when he scanned over the legs, they were kicking, which was very cool to see as well. He is very confident that he is not making a mistake in calling her a girl. He got a really good shot of the legs and there was no umbilical cord in the way so he was able to tell what wasn't there!! :)
I have 3 pictures that he gave us. The first two show her laying on her back and it is a side profile view. If you look at the head, you can see facial features like her nose and mouth. The bottom picture shows what helped him determine she is a girl!
Thank you so much for your prayers. You will never know how special you have made me feel. I will always remember this. And now you can join me in rejoicing over a healthy baby girl! :)
