Hello (x3!)

Well, a really good day today. After a bit of a crummy start during which (short version!) Amy and I decided we definitely have to move sooner rather than later, we went to our first meeting with Chris McAtee, our OB lady, and soon-to-be midwife. Things went a little scary for a half-hour or so. First Amy had an external doppler-type ultrasound - audio only - just to check the baby's heartbeat but... er, no heartbeat could be heard. While this was a little un-nerving, the fact that the baby is so young means that the heartbeat is faint enough to escape an external ultrasound's "sensitivity bits" (sorry to use such a technical term.) So Chris decided, "just for peace-of-mind's sake", to do a picture-type ultrasound, again externally. This showed that Amy's uterus was the right shape, that everything else looked normal except for... no baby! At least, not within the field of vision of the ultrasound machine. By this time Amy was quite upset, and I'll admit that I was just a little perturbed. Chris McAtee said we should go right next door to Pro-Imaging, who specialise in ultrasounds and medical imaging of all types, to get an internal scan - oh, and not to worry. We nearly didn't, while we waited twenty minutes to get scanned again, and this time... BABY! Moving baby! Heart beating visibly baby! Dancing like crazy baby! Arms starting to develop baby! Okay, so I'll quit adding baby onto every sentence, but phew! And cool! And wow, baby! I have to say that as well as arms, our little one is fast developing some great moves. I asked if perhaps Amy's movement was causing the baby to jig, but she said nope - it's just stretching and moving around (and probably thinking "Hey! Get outta my bubble! I'm developing arms and moves here!") Upshot was, between visits Amy's uterus had flipped over (scary sounding, very normal) which partly explained the difficulty in seeing/hearing the baby the first scan around.

The lady doing the sonogram added the "Hi" at the bottom btw. :)

So, everything is good and as it should be, and we left extremely relieved, a lot more happy, and with some better, clearer new scans to show you. The uterus-flip explains the fact that he's... oh yeah! Facing the other way! As a very cool bonus they also gave us two video clips of our baby wiggling around and busting some moves. We can't put them on the site here, but if anyone wants to see them we can email them to you. They're really, really cool, but quite sizeable files so they may take a while. We are about ten weeks and two days along, now. By twelve weeks - and the next visit - we will be able to determine whether it's a boy or a girl, and whether it has learned to do 'the robot'.

Love to everyone,

Jim, Amy, and Flipper