I feel like I should be more thrilled with the ultrasound, but the anxiety I had going into it dialed me way back to start with. And it wasn’t the what if something’s wrong with her beyond the subconscious anxiety I get every time, but worrying about if it would be worth the money, worrying about my mother-in-law having problems accessing the web feed, worrying about the baby being in the wrong position. I don’t know, it just feels like when I anticipate something big I end up an emotional mess rather than just enjoying it.

True to form, our little girl was obstinate and buried. So most of the time was spent with the tech working hard to try to get any kind of half-decent picture of her. There was a lot of blurry placenta fuzz – which she had her face and hands snuggled up to. She was awake and moving, just not moving away from that position. The tech did say she tends to see a lot more anterior placentas, and it does typically make getting pictures harder. I ended up laying on my left side, which I’m sure made things fun for the tech (who was on my right side, reaching over), but it did actually shift things enough to get some pictures. It was disappointing, in a lot of ways, because I wanted to see… more. More than a lot of fuzz and some peekaboo pictures.

I think the biggest part of this experience wasn’t just getting a couple of pictures of the baby, but the inclusion of the grandparents. My parents attended the session and watched on the big screen TV, and Den’s mom logged in to the live webcast they provided for family members. None of them have actually seen a live ultrasound before, they’ve only seen the 2D pictures that we show them after the fact. I know they all really appreciated getting the chance to experience this with us. This baby is celebrated by her entire extended family and is just so anxiously awaited.

But there she was on screen, obstinate or not, wiggling her fingers and kicking her feet. Our little girl, our baby. I did get misty eyes watching. When we got home I sat and stared at the best picture we have of her. I love it. The more I look at it, the more I love the picture. I can’t wait to meet her and see her little face in person.

Here’s a couple of the pictures… I’ll post these and some more on the ultrasound page (but not all of them, because most of them are fuzzy!). We do have a DVD of the video, but I don’t have access to any editing software right now so I’ll have to work on that later.