No pictures, please!

OK, so I know we haven't updated the blog lately, but that's just because not much has been going on lately. We're in waiting mode right now to find out what the gender is, so baby-life right now is pretty mundane. I'm at about 15 1/2 weeks today and according to our baby books, we have a little orange at this point. The baby is in the process of growing hair, eyebrows, and eyelashes and is starting to be able to recognize light, although his/her eyelids are still sealed closed and will be for awhile. Amazing considering about 3 months ago, we only had a little poppy seed!

We DID discover an interesting tidbit of information from my friend, Lindsey, though. Apparently, Virginia College (a technical school around here for you out-of-state folks) offers free ultrasounds every Thursday, so that their students can get hands-on training. It's completely free and the only thing you pay for is the ultrasound pictures if you want them, which are $10. This just made my day! We had gotten so spoiled in the beginning of the pregnancy because they were doing weekly ultrasounds for us to make sure the baby was doing okay, but now that we're past "the danger zone", my doctor is being a lot more stingy with the ultrasounds, which leads to a nervous Steph. I start not doing so well after about 2 weeks of not seeing our little one and, being that he/she is still too little for me to feel yet, I start worrying. So, the fact that we can go to VC anytime we feel like it is a Godsend!

We took advantage of this new found information last Thursday and headed over to VC for a piece-of-mind ultrasound, as it had been about 3 weeks since we had seen the baby. The tech we had was extremely nice and was willing to find anything we wanted on the screen (i.e., feet, hands, legs, face, etc.). Being that she's a student, she had a list of items to find on the ultrasound and label for her assignment, so we were able to see the baby for a good 20 minutes or so while she did her assignment. During this 20 minutes, our little one decided to give the tech a hard time! She kept trying to get his/her face on the screen and everytime she would just about get it, the baby would flip over with his (again, I'm using "his" for simplicity's sake) back to her! He flat out refused to have his face be seen! It was the funniest thing! He was flipping and doing somersaults... anything to avoid being seen from the front. He even tried to kick the probe away a few times! Finally, towards the end, she got him lying on his back and we were able to see the profile of his face for a few seconds... until he covered his face up with his hands! Haha! We were all laughing hysterically! He already has a little personality and he's (at the time) only the size of a lemon! You will be happy to know though, that we have 5 little fingers on each hand!

One of the senior techs came in toward the end of our ultrasound and was able to show us the legs, leg bones, and skull, all of which are growing just fine. She also said that we might be able to tell the gender in 2-3 weeks, so we made an appointment to come back in 2 weeks, which is Thursday, August 13th. Hopefully, we'll get lucky and will know what we're having, but if not, then we'll just keep going back each week til we find out. We have a follow-up apppointment with my normal ob-gyn on the 19th, but no ultrasound scheduled (as I mentioned, she's being stingy with the ultrasounds). I think she's waiting til I'm at 20 weeks for the next one, just to be sure we can see the gender by then. We've decided that if we get lucky next week and are able to see what it is, then we'll buy those pictures and will post them on the blog for everyone to see. I'm sure you're all starved for updated pictures! In the meantime, just keep those prayers coming!