This is only my third update in this series so far, but there hasn’t been all that much to report recently. However, a couple of weeks ago we went for the second, 20-Week baby scan, which is the one where you (can) find out the gender of the baby…
Updates
Well, as I said, there’s not been a lot to report from the last few weeks, to be honest.
M’wife was very tired for a while during the first trimester, but things seem to be pretty much back to normal now. She also hasn’t been feeling ill or having any weird cravings, which I know is very lucky. However, a little research online seems to suggest that things mostly seem to calm down during the second trimester.
There’s also still no visible sign of a bump. M’wife has apparently been able to feel some movement in her belly, but nothing that I can feel from the outside yet. Other than that, things have kinda gone back to not really feeling real, at least for me.
The Second Scan
The twenty-week scan was quite similar to the first one. M’wife lay on the bed while the nurse got to work with the scanner and we got to see the results on the screen. It was impressive how much more developed the baby was and I was surprised at the amount of detail you could see. It’s kind of freaky to see a black-and-white human skull on the screen, but you could make out details of the baby’s face when she zoomed out a bit. It was also possible to see the heart beating and the blood flowing around the body, which was a cool level of detail I hadn’t expected.
One of the main differences this time was that I got to hear the baby’s heartbeat. I should point out that m’wife did have an appointment with the midwife at 16 weeks where she got to hear it, but I haven’t been going to most of the regular midwife appointments (as these are usually just weigh-ins with blood tests and other such things). So, the scan was the first time I got to hear it.
The baby was a lot less active this time around but still managed to find a way to be awkward. They were lying face-down and refused to budge, which made it difficult for the nurse to do all of the measurements and checks that she needed to do, such as measuring bones, checking the size of the baby’s head, scanning his heart etc. No amount of jiggling seemed to get the little bugger to cooperate, and we nearly had to book an additional scan as we were in danger of running over time, but the nurse finally managed to get everything she needed and I’m delighted to report that everything was fine.
Oh, and we got to find out the gender. I know some people don’t want to know, but we were too curious. We also didn’t want the fuss and awkwardness of one of those gender reveal parties, plus my wife didn’t like the idea of anyone else finding out before she did!
Anyway, we’re having a boy! And we got another set of pictures of the now-more-fully-formed baby.
Not that there is too drastic a difference between this and the picture in the previous post, but still. (In case you can’t tell, that’s his head on the right, with his little nose pointing upwards.)
Again, the still image doesn’t really do justice to what it is like to see the live feed from the scanner on the big screen, but it’s still pretty amazing (at least to us!)
Final Thoughts
So, that’s it for now. I’ll check back in in a couple of weeks, when hopefully there will be more of a visible bump and possibly even some kicking to report! Until then, farewell!