24 Weeks & 3D Ultrasound

24 weeks today! Only 112 days left to go.

On Saturday we went to San Francisco to have a 3D ultrasound done. They are a bit expensive, so I was nervous going in that we would pay a bunch of money and Eleanor would end up being a bad position or something like that. Despite my worries, it was a great experience. She was facing just the right way and was awake and active the entire time.

I had been feeling nervous about her gender since the tech at our last ultrasound was hesitant to declare her a girl, saying only that she "looks" like a girl, so one of the reasons I wanted to get this 3D ultrasound was for a little more certainty in that area. As we were going back to the room for the scan, the tech asked us if we knew the gender. We said, "It's a girl." He laughed and said, "Well, we'll see about that." He explained that more errors tend to be made with girls, hence his skepticism. He was not helping my anxiety! But luckily the second he turned the ultrasound on he happened to be in the right place and said, "She is 300% a girl!" Yay! No more doubt about it. We definitely have a little girl on the way. 300% Eleanor.

The entire scan went really well. The tech told us that she looks like she is going to be tall and has very long limbs, toes, and fingers. She is currently hanging out head down and he thinks that her length will prevent her from turning breech. I hope he's right! He could already make out some hair, particularly her eyebrows, which he said is unusual for a baby her age, so there is a pretty good chance she could come out with a nice head of hair.

For about 40 minutes we got to watch in amazement as Eleanor sucked on her fingers, hiccuped, opened and closed her mouth, and moved around. The tech was able to get some really good pictures of her face with her tiny developing features. We might be bias, but we think she is already pretty beautiful. Here are a few of my favorites:

Sweet little face!

Looking for a thumb to suck on, perhaps?

Her fingers made it to her mouth! And there is one of her long feet.

Pretty profile with a cute little nose.

She looks so comfortable and calm.

It is so incredible to have this preview of our baby. I already feel like I have her features memorized. It is so astonishing to look at the pictures and know that she is inside me right now, to know that those are the exact feet that are kicking me and that is the face that I will spend so many hours kissing.

Here is a slideshow with all of the images from the scan. They can be viewed individually on my flickr.


Created with flickr slideshow from softsea.

We also got a DVD with video from the scan. It 20 minutes long and I don't imagine many of you will want to sit through the entire thing, but I uploaded it anyway. The highlights are around 1:40 (sucking on her fingers), 7:00 (kicking, opening and closing her mouth, opening and closing her hands), 12:50 (twisting around).

Eleanor in 3D from Callai Nagle on Vimeo.