Sunday, February 13, 2011

4-D Ultrasound

So, Asher was delivered at Lexington Medical Center because I was still teaching and had my own insurance.  Sloan; however, will be delivered at Tuomey Medical Center because I now stay home and will be delivering under Brent's insurance.  With Asher, they automatically scanned 4-D while doing my normal ultrasounds and we received free copies from his ultrasounds.  Because I was glucose intolerant, which basically means not bad enough to be labeled as gestational diabetes but still having some glucose issues, they gave me an extra ultrasound at 34 weeks.  Here are a few of our little Asher...

Asher sleeping away and sucking on his left arm while having his right arm up by his head...


They then buzzed my belly trying to get some movement.  Here you can see he opened his eyes.


And apparently, he wasn't in the mood for company as he threw up his hand as if to say, "leave me alone."


This one just shows how he was a little cramped in there...



     Well, this time around I was not labeled as glucose intolerant, so I was not going to get that extra ultrasound, they did not do any 4-D scans or pictures, and honestly Brent and I wanted them.  : )  Not only that, but at my 20 week appointment when we found out it was a girl, we were told in a slightly different way.  They did the ultrasound but never showed us the sex.  She actually handed me the towel to begin wiping off my belly and I was very confused.  I said, "Oh, we wanted to know the sex."  She said smiling, "Well, you've got to work for it."  She then gave me small wrapped box to open.  Inside, there was a small pink bear key chain.  Well, as exciting as that was, I was a little bummed that we never got to truly see for ourselves.  She did give me a picture that had the arrow pointing to certain parts saying, "It's a girl!" 
      This past Friday, Brent and I decided to make an appointment in Columbia at a place called Wee See Imaging just so we'd have that extra ultrasound and some pictures to share with Sloan one day.  We were able to see that it was a girl with our own eyes and now have a DVD and CD of photos.  Overall, the pictures are not quite as clear as Asher's and she had some difficulty getting Sloan to cooperate and move her hands away from her face but it's still very cool to know what's going on inside.  Apparently, Sloan's face is right behind the  placenta so she had to have me on my side to get a better angle.  Here is a small clip showing our baby girl.  Towards the end, you can actually see her open her eye an give a small smile. 




Looks like Sloan may be a thumb sucker or at least she is here...



Just a sweet picture...


Here, it looks like she's covering her ears and her eyebrows are clearly scrunched.



I asked if we'd be able to tell how much hair Sloan had and she said let's check.  She said usually you can see little white spots that represent hair but Sloan has distinct little lines.  This one shows that our little girl will have a head full of hair like her brother did at birth. 


Just look at all of that light blonde hair!!  The nurses all commented on it.  : )  They say it's very rare to have a blonde newborn much less, one with so much blonde hair!  Oh, I can't wait for this moment again.  There's nothing quite like it.



I'll end with one of my favorites of Sloan.  Here she's looking truly like a girl with her hand delicately folded under her face and making pouty lips, which I'm sure she'll try to use to get her way. 

So, if things go like they did with Asher, who came 3 weeks early, it's possible I'll have some actual photos of Sloan next month!  She's due April 11.  We'll just have to wait and see!