Whose baby is it?

Well, if you take a look at the latest ultrasound pictures from this morning, there's no doubt that this baby is mine - all you have to do is take one look at the cheeks. I was all cheeks as a baby as you can tell from my baby picture that we included with these. We included Aaron's just for reference, but he definitely doesn't have the same cheeks. So to all of you in Pennsylvania, have no fear - this baby seems to have the Fleming cheeks! It was kind of cool to see the change in the face from a month ago - baby actually looks more like a human rather than a ghost! In fact, the technician said she could see a full set of hair - we couldn't quite see that though. Aaron asked if the baby had a full set of teeth too, and she laughed.

The doctor's appointment was pretty eventful today. We started with an ultrasound during which baby continued to measure big - he/she is now in the 91st percentile, meaning that he/she is bigger than 91% of babies. They showed us some charts of baby's growth, and what we were able to tell is that baby's head and abdomen are just about off the charts as far as size is concerned, but baby's legs are just a little longer than average - so Aaron knows he had a part. After all, the Menkes tend to be short-legged. The head measures bigger than the abdomen, which is good apparently because if the head can get through the birth channel, then the abdomen can too. Now if only I can get the head out :) They estimate baby's weight at about 5 lbs, 11 oz right now, but really it's plus or minus a pound of that estimate, so baby is somewhere between 4 lbs, 11 oz and 6 lbs, 11 oz - let's hope for the former! The doctor estimates that at birth the baby will be in the upper 9 lb to 10 lb range.

Because the baby is above the 90th percentile, they did what is known as a biophysical exam on the baby with the ultrasound. With this exam they check baby's breathing (although it's really only practice breathing at this point) and also movements, to make sure it's moving around. They then did a non-stress test on me. Basically I had to sit/lie for about 20-30 minutes with two monitors around my middle - one that monitors my uterine movements to see if there are any contractions and one that monitors baby's heartbeat. They also gave me a button that I had to push when baby moved. This was to see if spikes in the heartrate coincided with movements. Everything looked good once we got the monitors and me in a position that would work for 20 minutes, but they'll continue to do these two tests weekly now. So every Wednesday we'll be headed to the doctor's office - I told them we'd be good friends before too long.

Because big babies and gestational diabetes go hand-in-hand, they also wanted to test my blood sugar levels again today. They couldn't do the regular test because I hadn't fasted, but they checked my blood sugar & it seemed ok, but because of some other things (don't ask me what) they want me to do a modified diabetic diet, really I'm just to watch the amount of starches I consume. So no more cereal for breakfast - here we come eggs! This will probably be the hardest part for me because I love my starches, especially since I've been pregnant - the more breads, pastas, rice, potatos I can eat the better, but I guess I'm going to have to eat more meats - ick! I have to fast before the appointment next week as they want to do another test - fun!

I think that's everything from today. We hope you enjoy the cheeky pictures and we'll give you an update after next week's appointment. In the meantime, we'll continue to prepare the house and hope that they're done banging on the roof and walls soon. The house should hopefully be done by tomorrow - it's looking good :) Hugs to all of you -