August 5th 2005

The second appointment started off with us in the parking lot of the imaging facility, Kristy chugging the last 20 ounces of the 32 ounces she was supposed to drink before the ultrasound (a.k.a. sonogram). We moved to the waiting area and like last time I sat down with my book "The Expectant Father" while Kristy stood in line and checked in.

We didn't have to wait all that long, but long enough for Kristy to think she was going to explode. there were some fountains on the way into the building that she commented about and after we went back behind the closed doors for her to change someone got a drink of water from one of those water coolers you see in offices and it made the glug glug noise and of course Kristy commented again about the sounds of running water from the fountain out front and the glugging water from the cooler and her eminent need to relieve herself before we had to deal with an accident. Then of course the room wasn't quite ready so we had to wait a few more minutes or if you ask Kristy a few more hours, but to be fair she was trying to hold in 32 ounces of water and apparently pregnant ladies need to go more often then normal or at least this one seems to.

Finally we got into the room and Kristy laid down on the doctors table and our ultrasound technician came in and busted out the gel and went to work. He found the little baby pretty quickly and we saw it move its arm and arch its back and squirm around right away. There was only one so no more jokes about twins. I can only describe it as awesome. I’ve scored touchdowns, hit home runs, won races, defeated the evil alien race threatening the world in kanomi's classic contra (without up, up, down, down, left, right, left, right, b, a, b, a, select, start for you hard core NES players from the 80’s), defeated a formidable German foreign exchange student in chess while the football team chanted USA!, USA!, snowboarded off a cliff (accidentally but still what a rush), graduated from high school and college, flown around the world and I have to say that the instant I saw the little baby moving topped them all.

The whole pregnancy and baby became much more real for me at that moment because until then all I knew is that there was a little thing shaped like an alien inside Kristy’s belly and there was no way to know if it was okay or not. Kristy got teary of course and like any strong, macho mans man who has accomplished all those feats above, I bit my tongue and held in my tears of joy, to maintain that tough guy image, but inside my mind was racing and I was overjoyed, much like my wedding day. I had to hold in some tears then too but I won’t tell if you won’t.

The ultrasound guy showed us the heart and we saw it beating. He measured it and it was 163 beats per minute, normal for a creature that size. He measured it from head to bottom and it was approximately 1.36 inches, normal again. He checked to make sure that there wasn't a second ectopic pregnancy in the fallopian tubes and there wasn't. he estimated the due date as march first +/- 6 days which put us at 10 weeks 2 days, not far off from the February 27th due date calculated at our first appointment which had us at 10 weeks four days.

The ultrasound guy printed us off some pictures on the little Sony thermal printer and we took them home and scanned them in right away to preserve them and to post them on our website so that friends and family everywhere could share in the joy of our kids first baby pictures.

I can't wait for the next ultrasound, we get to find out if it's a boy or a girl, too bad it's like a million weeks away...

Funny, writing that last bit reminds me of a Saturday night live (SNL) skit some of you might remember about "Pat". Basically it was impossible to tell what gender the character Pat actually was and I remember one of the last Pat skits showed Pat's birth and you "finally" thought you were going to learn what Pat was, and the doctor is like "It's A.... ....Baby!" and you are like what! It's supposed to be "It's a Boy" or "It's a Girl" not it's a freaking Baby, what the heck is Pat? Anyways, I'm excited for the next ultrasound.