12 Weeks

I am finally at the 12 week mark! We had our second doctor's appointment this morning and everything is still great. We heard the baby's heartbeat with the doppler and its heart rate was still in the 170s, which is pretty strong. All of my blood tests from last appointment were normal. Overall I got a clean bill of health. I've only gained a pound since my 8-week visit, which is pretty good. We've decided not to do any genetic testing so our next appointment will be a quick check-up the day before Thanksgiving and then on December 17th, we'll have a full "anatomy ultrasound" where they check all parts of the baby. They'll be able to tell us the sex of the baby then too. If we get antsy before that, there is a private imaging company we can go to to find out as early as 16 weeks (just another four weeks from now). We might end up going that route. They'd also give us a "keepsake" video of the ultrasound.

As far as the alien baby, it should be about 2 1/2 inches long this week-and growing about 1/2 inch a week now. It is supposed to be starting to swallow amniotic fluid and its digestive system is starting to develop. One of the grosser things I read was that the intestines actually start on the outside of the body, in the umbilical cord, and now they should be moving into the abdomen. Pretty gross.

I'm feeling pretty good this week. Still very tired. I am planning on taking this Friday off so I can rest a little bit. It's been a very busy couple of weeks at work and I worked a bit over this past weekend, so I'm going to try to take a day off and have a three-day weekend. And I'm really looking forward to it!