Ultrasound video (at 20 weeks pregnant)

I finally managed to put a part of the ultrasound video on our blog. As described before, this ultrasound was made on January 2nd in Holland when Hanneke was about 20 weeks pregnant. That is, according to the lady, she was 20 weeks but "officially" it was more like 18 weeks. We will have to check this with the gynecologist during the next ultrasound. In any case, the ultrasound of the video was done four weeks ago.

On the video of about one minute, you can see our Kleintje in Hanneke's womb. You can see he is swallowing the amniotic fluid. (At this stage, he still has quite some space in the uterus.) The lady also points to his arms and ribs (all in Dutch). Kleintje is also stretching (you can also see he is moving his arms and legs). You can also see his heart beating. All-in-all, it is pretty amazing to see!



(Our Kleintje is already famous as this video can also be seen on YouTube: http://youtube.com/watch?v=6vFf_6TRnHo)

belly at 22+ weeks pregnant

Now that I am somewhere between 22 and 24 weeks pregnant (depending on which estimate we use), my belly really starts to grow and show! I also feel our Kleintje more frequently! For example, late in the evening he is usually awake. But also at other moments during the day I can feel him splashing around and giving me little kicks. We sometimes try to talk, sing or play music for him and it even looks like he is occasionally reacting to that!

Alive and kicking!

Since a few weeks, Hanneke can feel our little Kleintje in her belly. That is, she felt something before but now she is sure that he is moving around. There also seem to be specific times during the day that he is usually awake. This is also often in the evening, which is very common. So, every night I am also trying to feel our baby and since a few days I can also feel a kick or two occasionally. Yesterday, when we were sitting on the sofa I put my head on Hanneke's belly and I suddenly got a huge kick in my face! Quite frankly, I was very amazed and even shocked! The nerves of Kleintje to kick his father in the face. ;) But on the other hand, perhaps he was even trying to wake up my brain as I was about to do an IQ-test that was broadcasted on TV. If that was his idea, it worked as I scored 137! However, I think this high score says more about the quality of the test than of my actual IQ. ;) But anyway, we are happy to notice that Kleintje is having fun by splashing around and training his muscles. As his brain is still very much in development, he is actually also training to improve his IQ!

Boy or girl?

Although we don't want to know the gender of our little baby-to-be, it is still quite interesting to think about it of course. It is also quite funny to see what opinions people have about this issue. We don't really believe in all those special signs to determine the gender but it is still interesting to hear people's thoughts about it. For this reason we also put a small poll on this blog to ask people whether we will get a boy or a girl. It is striking to see that a large majority think that we will get a boy. At this time, 30 people voted and almost two third (19 people = 63%) voted a boy. (Now I only hope that people didn't vote more than once. They might do it in the hope they can thereby influence the gender. Well, I can tell that will not work!) In any case, Hanneke and I also have a different opinion about this issue, although we don't care too much about that in the end. We just want to be patient for a while and would like to keep the gender as a surprise.

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