It might be a gymnast, but I will draw the line at a Mary Lou Retton haircut

Today I had my second doctor's appointment, and since it was supposed to be another "Don't Miss" for the father, Jeromy again bravely accompanied me to the OBGYN office, which he calls "the Alien Universe" because "it's like a time warp that you get sucked into and can't get out of."  It's true that we were there for a couple of hours again, and kept getting cycled back out into the waiting room between the ultrasound, the exam, the lab work, etc.  

The only really exciting part of the appointment was, of course, getting another ultrasound, which they only did because it's part of the Down syndrome/chromosomal abnormalities testing that Jeromy and I opted to do. We're not considered high risk, but the doctor recommended it.  The sonogram tech zoomed in on the baby, which definitely looked more like a human this time.  Jeromy commented that it looked like the baby was just laying there, "hanging out."  Right then, the baby did a big bouncing type move!  I'm not really sure how to describe it, other than that it looked like when a kid on a trampoline jumps and then sort of sits on the trampoline to bounce on his butt.  Jeromy and I both went, "whoa, what was that?!"  I thought maybe it was like a full-body hiccup, but the technician said babies sometimes just bounce off like that.  We saw it happen a few times, and we could definitely see some movement and twitching limbs...pretty amazing!  It's hard to believe that I can't tell that there is something the size of a lime doing gymnastics in my belly, but supposedly it will be at least another month before I can feel anything.

Unfortunately, they decided to be super-efficient by taking the blood sample for the test during the ultrasound.  I got pretty distracted, because the lab lady said she was "jsut going to do a little finger prick", which I hate; I tried to get her to take blood from my arm instead, but she didn't go for it.  So she popped the little needle into my finger, and I was brave and didn't make a peep, but then it wouldn't even bleed!   So she began squeezing the heck out of my finger, and Jeromy started massaging down my arm to try to help, and all I wanted to do was have a precious darn moment with the ultrasound of my wiggly baby! Finally, the lab tech called me a mean name ("non-bleeder") and switched to my other hand.  She still had to wring and squeeze my second finger to get out a few drops of blood, but she finally got what she needed.  No wonder my hands are always cold...I have no blood circulating through them!

When we went in to see the doctor, it was pretty uneventful...how are you feeling, blah blah blah, any questions, blah blah, blah.  She did ask me about my nutrition, and I had to confess that I had pretty much abandoned meat and vegetables in favor of all things starchy.  And SOMEONE whose name rhymes with "Deromy" told her about my little mac and cheese problem.  No more OBGYN appointments for him for a while!

Here's one of the latest ultrasound pictures...head on the left, foot sticking up on the right.

If it looks like the head is the same size as the whole rest of the body, it's because at this stage, it is. 

 ***GEMS FROM JEROMY***

On being shown a photograph of what the average fetus looks like at 9 weeks: "It looks like a shrimp.  Kinda makes me hungry."  (He was a little bit in trouble for this one)