So, no, I didn't get to hear the baby's heartbeat. That comes later, I guess. I did get to see it, though, and that was supremely cool. And we did get some pictures.

They don't look like much, as stills. A few blobs. On the ultrasound monitor, moving, it did in fact look kind of like a baby, though. It moved a lot, swimming contentedly around in its little bubble. Turned some flips. And whenever it was facing the right way, I could see its heart going, a rapid flutter on the front of its chest.

(Actually, to be honest, it looks like a space alien. I understand they become more photogenic as they get bigger. Thank goodness.)

Thank goodness #2: There's only one baby. There wasn't a big chance of twins, but it was possible. My grandmother has (had) two brothers who were twins, and Matt's grandfather is a twin. But there was just the one little squirming creature. Whew.

When we got back to the office, I borrowed the office scanner (old and pathetic as it is) and scanned in two of the eight or so pictures. Matt posted one of them right away in his blog; I posted both later, when I got home from work.

I was happy to discover that, after the ultrasound, my visit with the doctor was mainly so he could make sure I wasn't having any problems. No exam, no blood drawn. I won't be so lucky next time - my February visit will be with the practice's nurse practitioner, and they'll take blood samples for some tests to screen the baby for certain defects.

(Those results take about a week to come back from the labs, I'm told. You can just expect me to be a nervous wreck for the last week of February.)

My next ultrasound will be in March, and I'll have to go to another facility for it - apparently I'm fat enough that the equipment in my OB's office will have trouble seeing the baby through it. (This ultrasound was done The Other Way, which is all I'm going to say about it.) I have to appreciate my doctor's tact in telling me I was too fat, though. He didn't actually say the word "fat", and he was very matter-of-fact about it - not a failing on my part, simply a limitation of their equipment.

That ultrasound will also be - for reasons I'm not entirely certain I understand - a couple of weeks earlier than the norm. I'm hoping an earlier scan won't make it more difficult to detect the baby's gender. We'd really like to know, so we can pick out decorations and nail down a name and get used to it. Prepare, in a limited way.

It's snowing today. Everything south of our county is closed, but we're on the north end of our county, and when I got up this morning, as the radio was listing off the closings, I could barely see a dusting on the ground and on the cars.

It was still falling as I drove to work, though, and it's supposed to keep coming - they were predicting 3-5 inches by nightfall. We'll see, I guess. That drive home isn't going to be much fun, though, any way you slice it. I might take the long way around, just so I don't have to deal with the overpass. (And also because my car's about out of gas, and it's a right turn into the gas station if I take the long way.)

But first, I have to get through the day. I am happy and content in my well-paying job...

--Liz