It’s a…

I’ve been seriously remiss in updating the blog, which doesn’t surprise me or, probably, you. The holidays were a little crazy, with too much travel, and a lot of trying to get work done before I left. The upside is that there’s plenty of news to share and lots of new kitchen toys to show you (and to use for new recipes).

But first… baby update! We had our big ultrasound on December 21st. Zack and I knew ahead of time that we wanted to find out the sex of the baby; I’m impatient, and he sees it as a surprise either way, so we agreed. I could barely focus on anything or sleep as the day approached (what’s my due date going to be like?), and luckily I’d scheduled the ultrasound first thing in the morning. We got to the hospital early and I had a quick visit for the NuMoM2b study, which I really ought to write about sometime. Then we were off to imaging.

When I first saw the baby on the screen I felt really happy and noticed that the head and neck are a lot more defined now than they were around 13 weeks when we had a dating ultrasound (and certainly more than at 5 and 7 weeks, when the baby was invisible and a peanut, respectively). After what seemed like forever of taking measurements, the tech asked if we wanted to know, and we said yes. 

Baby Hoho is a boy! We both thought so and have been calling him a he for a long time now, but it was nice to have confirmation. I feel OK now buying him outfits, and apparently so do other folks; he got some VERY cute things for Christmas. He was wiggling and curled up and hiding under my belly button, so they could hardly get any of the other images they needed, but apparently he has no problem displaying his junk for all the world to see. I’m not going to put that picture on here because, you know, privacy, since the internet is forever. I will share this profile picture though:

 

This is my favorite of the images, because you can really see his nose (my aunt says it’s like my maternal family, which makes me feel happy, since I thought that too) and his cute lips there. I can almost tell a little of what he’ll look like.

We have more scans coming up, including a 3D scan sometime later or in the 3rd trimester; these are all part of the NuMoM2b study, which is pretty great. Anyway, he’s a boy! Yay! A really cute boy. It all seems more real now and I can’t wait to meet him.