It Just Got A Lot More Real...

Ali and I (well, just her - I just sat on a chair next to her) had the 20-week ultrasound yesterday at Northwestern's Prentice Women's Hospital. Should I tell you about the baby first, or the hospital? Ok, how about baby...

Baby is great. We actually just received word from Ali's Dr. that all measurements are good. I don't technically know what that means, but hopefully for it's and Ali's sake, it means the baby doesn't have a huge melon. We saw all body parts, head, torso, two arms, two hands, two legs, two feet and a tiny, little, knee. Even though we had the opportunity, we did not find out the sex. I am convinced its a girl, Ali says its a boy. Let's just hope its one or the other.

Other than that, it was just an overall cool experience to see inside Ali's ever growing tummy. You can definitely see a baby in there, and it was fun pointing out various parts of the human anatomy. We learned the reason why Ali hasn't felt any movement is because of the placement of her placenta - it is essentially blocking any movement towards her stomach. The Dr. said she would most likely feel movement on her sides first, as the baby would have a more direct route to Ali's insides going that way.

Now - to the not so cool experience with the hospital. First, the hospital calls us the day before and tells us we need to push our appt back 30 minutes. Fine, we show up at 8:50 for what we thought was our now 9:00 appt. The receptionist then proceeded to chastise us for showing up 20 minutes late. The same person then rudely messes up the information gathering stage of the appt by telling us that they don't have our insurance information. The way she approached it was just plain old rude. When we get into the ultrasound room, our sonographer had about the same personality as a roll of duct tape. I had to make my own excitement by shouting out baby parts as we rolled through the procedure. ME: "Hey - is that a femur!?!?!" HER: "Yes." ME: "Thanks, for being in such a customer-centric job - you are exactly what I want when I am learning about the baby growing inside my wife. Your enthusiasm for other people's excitement will take you far in life." Overall, it was a very poor visit to the hospital. Thankfully, I have already been reassured by Gibson that the staffing in Labor and Delivery is night and day opposite of the Ultrasound Department.

Once we make the giant leap into the technology of the 90's, we will figure out how to scan some of the ultrasound images and post them.