The Simple Life: 20 weeks

It's hard for me to believe that we are already halfway to baby #2. It's all gone by in a hurried sort of blur and here we are, half baked. We had our anatomy ultrasound last Friday which is where they look to see if the baby is developing normally, has all it's bits and pieces and most *importantly* where you can find out the gender. I am very excited to say that we're having another girl! We would have been happy with "healthy" but I am secretly (and not so secretly) pleased that I'll be able to reuse Ellie's clothes and girl stuff. She has an unnatural amount of clothing so it's great that we don't have to start over from scratch in that department.

The ultrasound went well and based on my last experience I decided to not drink the 10 gallons of water that they tell you to before hand. 28oz proved to be the magic number because when I arrived I had enough water in my bladder but not so much that I wanted to murder everyone who was going in that wasn't me. Word of wisdom for all you soon-to-be moms out there - you don't need to drink as much as they tell you to. It's a sort of cruel trick they play on pregnant women. They lure you in with the hopes of finding out the gender of your baby and then force you to sit in the waiting room for what feels like hours while you do the foot tap and seat squirm dance.

I have had a weird sense that baby #2 is going to be a little more mellow than Ellie and this proved to be true during this ultrasound. Last time, Ellie was squirming around so much that the poor tech couldn't get the pictures she needed and kept asking me to jump up and down and turn over, etc so that she would move positions. This time around the baby was performing so well that they tech was in shock and kept saying, "wow, okay, I can't believe what great shots I'm getting!". With Ellie the tech couldn't tell us definitely what her gender was and it wasn't until 28 weeks that we found out for sure. Baby #2 was much more "showy" of her girl parts. :) Not to compare the two already - my point is things went much more smoothly this time.

So baby #2 is cooking along real nicely. Our second trimester genetic testing came back negative for any genetic defects and she seems to be "all there". Our next biggest challenge is coming up with a name. Now that we know the gender, Tom can't avoid the task any longer. I'll have to pin him down one of the days soon so we can go over our lists. Last time Ellie was the only name we could agree on. We'll have to do some real digging for a name we both like. Suggestions welcome!