Finally!

So this is what our baby looks like!

It's weird. I'm happy, but I'm also, oh I don't know... So that's it! We've seen the baby. And now we won't see it again until March, if all goes according to plan. If we do see it again, it's because something's wrong, and we don't want that.

So it's like Christmas morning, after all the packages are torn apart. You are left feeling inundated with new things, but somehow dissatisfied, or unfulfilled.

The baby was also pretty stubborn--it turned towards us for a brief time, and the technician grabbed these shots while she could. But then it flipped over, and wouldn't present for any more pictures (I guess it's got a little of my sister in it, too!)

The head, arms and legs were measured, as well as girth or a waist measurement, and its heart, umbilical cord, kidneys and lips were measured. I think that's what I found frustrating today, and I think that's leaving me with an unsatisfied feeling. The whole thing was so clinical that it wasn't even exciting! I don't understand how an ultrasound technician could be so uninterested in the emotions people feel when seeing their baby for the first time. From the moment she fired up the machine, all I wanted was to see our baby. But we looked at every imaginable organ in very fine detail before I got a glimpse. Sometimes I would see what appeared to be a face off to the side, and she would comment that some stupid unrecognizable structure that she was focusing on was the vena cava, or whatever. So I knew that I wasn't seeing the face, I was just seeing some hollowed-out section of baby that I wasn't at all interested in. I just wanted to see my baby! And after 10 minutes of looking at everything I didn't want to see, we saw perhaps 60 seconds of baby. And then it turned away, and she turned off the machine, and that was it. And we have video of that wonderful minute of seeing the baby, though it's blurry and I can't even tell if the kid is cute or not! But I just might watch the video every day so that if I ran into my baby on the street, at least I would recognize it.

Poor Mike just thinks I'm impossible to please, and I'm sure he's right. No matter what I think I want ('I just want to hear the heart beat!', 'I just want to feel it!', or 'I just want to see it!'), I'm never quite satisfied. I'm left wanting something more.

Like my baby.