2D/3D/4D ultrasound (18 or 20 weeks pregnant?)

First of all, Happy New Year to everybody!

Today, we went for a special ultrasound (see www.echografie.nl). It wasn't a normal check-up but a kind of extra ultrasound that we wanted to do in addition to the normal appointments with the gynecologist. This ultrasound was quite long, we got some pictures and a dvd, and it was in Dutch (which was nice for a change). We were very exiting about it and it was a really great experience in the end! We saw the baby for about half an hour. We also got an estimate of the baby's age, which was about 20 weeks. This is about one and a half week more than we were told by the gynecologist based on the early estimates. We might thus have to consider that the baby is coming earlier than we originally expected. But in any case, our baby is growing, which can easily be seen because the fetus and uterus look much bigger than on earlier ultrasound. And although this is logical, it is pretty amazing when you actually see it. We checked a lot of other things too. For example, we counted the fingers and toes: 5+5+5+5=20! We could also see all the organs and bones and they all looked fine. It was also pretty amazing to see the baby move and he even appeared to react to the forces on the womb. But the most amazing thing was that we could see him swallow the amniotic fluid! (By the way, we keep saying he, although we don't want to know the gender. We also had to indicate this at the beginning of the ultrasound.)

We got four new ultrasound pictures. On the first one you can see the baby à la scary movie. ;) The picture shows the front part of the head. You can clearly see the mouth and you can even see the lens in the right eye. The second picture shows the whole baby from the side. Especially the contours of the face are well visible here. But you can also see some other parts of the body, like the legs. On the third ultrasound you can see the baby's foot! It looks like a footballer's foot, doesn't it! ;) However, Hanneke would say, he is more trying to make a volleyball smash... The final picture is a close-up of the face while the baby was swallowing the amniotic fluid.

We also tried to do a 3-dimensional ultrasound but in our case it didn't work very well. This was probably because it usually works a bit better when the baby is slightly older and at the time we went the baby was lying quite close to the placenta so that the view was kind of blocked. Still, we could see the rough contours of the baby. And together with the normal 2D ultrasound, it was really a cool experience! We also got a dvd with the whole ultrasound on it, including the oral explanations. We'll try to upload a part of this video on our blog because it was quite amazing to see the baby move.

Update:
We have put some parts of the ultrasound videos on the blog:
http://baby.bogers-huberts.com/2008/01/ultrasound-video-20-weeks-pregnant.html
http://baby.bogers-huberts.com/2008/02/umbilical-cord-and-blood-vessels.html
http://baby.bogers-huberts.com/2008/02/3d4d-ultrasound-video.html
http://baby.bogers-huberts.com/2008/02/kleintjes-heart-beat.html