April showers brought May flowers and the jasmine blooms in our yard smell wonderful; I can’t help but think of the beauty of life each time I pull in our driveway and see them. Our strawberries and Cherry tomatoes are growing and producing too, they are so yummy; the raspberry bush is not producing anything yet but continues to grow wickedly fast and furious as it tries to tangle itself into the blueberry bush. It is the end of the school year and so many things are underway; we have been busy, busy, busy. Enzo is 18 weeks and some change as of today and will be 19 weeks on Friday. He weighed about 8 ounces during the ultrasound on Monday and this week is about the length of a bell pepper.
On Monday, my friend K rode with me down to meet Lucy and Ricky for our appointments. Our first stop was for the second trimester screen for fetal abnormalities. The ultrasound taken on Monday combined with the first trimester screen and blood taken at 12 weeks continued to show that little Enzo is indeed a rock star and is developing into a perfect little boy. His spine looked beautiful, the measurements of the back of his neck were spot on, he had bone in his nose area where it was supposed to be that indicates the lack of Down’s Syndrome, he had four functioning chambers in his heart, all his internal organs, a total of ten fingers, and a total of 10 toes.
After reading how Bump Fairy’s friend got secret footage of one of their ultrasounds we decided to take it a step further and Lucy ordered a spy pen off the internet for $20.00. It looks just like a fancy office pen and while we were getting the ultrasound she was able to record the entire 18 minute scan with it. I have it on my computer but I’m not tech savvy enough to edit it down to make it possible to post on here. Lucy and Ricky have still pictures that once I get copies of I will post right away for you to see. Enzo doesn’t look much different from the last ultrasound, just a tad bit bigger and a ton more handsome.
Lucy had purchased some surrogacy shirts for us and here we are after the appointment modeling them.
After a delicious lunch at the Olive Garden we headed to the birthing center for our prenatal appointment. The birthing center appointments seem pretty anticlimactic after seeing such high quality ultrasounds but we still heard the heartbeat on the Doppler and I measured at 16 ½ which is good. I jumped from having gained no weight at 12 weeks to gaining 10 pounds in the 6 weeks that followed which kind-of threw me for a loop but what did I expect when most my day focuses on when and what I’m going to eat and it has been harder than ever to make those food choices consistently healthy choices. I’ve noticed that there are getting to be more and more options of flavors in the Greek yogurt section which I love because of the amount of protein it contains; I’ve been eating up the Oikos brand with caramel as of late. I’m still addicted to anything in the Limeade family, V8 juice, and the quart of caffeine free tea I make each day; I’m probably going to need to have my teeth whitened after this pregnancy.
Here are some belly shots taken of the past few weeks, I’m due to take our 18 week picture today when the kids get home from school and can operate the camera for me.
© Pocketbebe, 2010
