oloriel | 18+5 ("It" is indeed a "he") (Reply)

"That's a beautiful cerebellum right there!"
"Um... that's nice?"
"I know it doesn't matter to you, but it's very important to me as a doctor."
"Well, if it's important to you, it's important to me too?"
"OK, being able to see the cerebellum clearly is a very good indicator that the spine is completely closed. Which is what we want."
"Yay!"

Seriously, though, 'I know it doesn't matter to you'! Sheesh! I may not know what it means, but if it matters to the doctor, it is clearly relevant to me, no?
So, everything's in place (not just the cerebellum ;)) and, as far as that can be determined, working properly! Size-wise, Baby II is now somewhat larger than average (the numbers now rather suit a fetus of 20 weeks, rather than one of almost 19), but not so much that it's worrisome. The same was true for Felix and we all know that he nonetheless took his sweet time...
Placenta is, again, at the back wall, supposedly the safest place for it.

Gyn asked whether I wanted to do the big specialist ultrasound in Cologne again; I admitted that this time, I didn't particularly care to. She nodded with a knowing smile: "Ah yes, with the first child, you can never get enough, but with the second child, you're actually happy for every appointment that you can skip!"
And that's part of it, yeah, but in all honesty, I just don't feel it's necessary. For one, I can feel Baby II so well by now (turning around or having the hiccups) that I don't feel the need for reassurance that I felt last time. And then, the only real difference between my gyn's equipment and that at the specialist's office is that he projects the sightings onto the wall, so you can see everything super-large. Other than that, though, there's nothing that my gyn's equipment can't show just as well (she's got pretty high-end stuff, much better than what the local hospital has, for instance). And the specialist was totally humourless last time. In short, if my gyn doesn't see anything that warrants a closer look, which she didn't, why bother?
(Well, because it might have been nice for Jörg to have a chance for some extended womb cinema, of course, but he's so crazy-busy at the moment that it would have been impossible to get an appointment within the proper timeframe (before Christmas!) that he could've attended, anyway.)

Here, have some ultrasound pics if you want!

Yeah, he: Intuition and/or crackshot theories have proven to be right; today's ultrasound clearly showed a little something between Baby II's legs, the sort of little something that women don't have. As I said yesterday, I expected as much: For several weeks, certain signs ("I have a beard coming!") implied that something in me was producing testosterone; moreover, I'd already thought I caught a glimpse of penis on last time's ultrasound, but it was gone too quickly to be sure. This time, we got a good safe look at mini-erection (he'd probably sucked his thumb earlier on. NO I AM NOT KIDDING THAT REALLY HAPPENS!).

Amusingly, by the way, it's especially the elderly (and the downright old) who keep asking "So, do you already know?", pretty much as soon as you say that you're pregnant (i.e. way before it's realistic that you would know). Modern technology = total foresight! Afterwards, they'll hastily reassure you that of course it doesn't matter "as long as it's healthy", but in fact, it seems to matter a great deal to them - more, I sometimes feel, than it ever mattered to me...