Wednesday, January 30, 2008

XX

It's a girl!!! During our ultrasound we got to see several different views of our beautiful baby girl. The first picture has an arrow pointing to her girl parts used for gender determination. The picture is essentially a slice through her middle with her head to the right and her back angling up to the left. The other pictures are two more or less full-length shots where you can see her head and chest and backbone and a picture near her head of her perfect little hand. Al at Abio's (a great hole-in-the-wall pizza place in Ocala) thinks her hand is forming the tomahawk chop of the "School out west", but we informed him that her other hand is hidden as she is actually performing a Gator Chomp. I've actually forgotten what the fifth picture is of because they took so many and then just handed us a stack to take home (I have a guess in the caption below). Krista's favorite picture is of the hand. You can bet it will be her desktop background soon (if it isn't already).

So by now you may be wondering what her name is. We have decided to name her Emma Ruth Wilson. Krista and I have always liked Emma. Krista came by Emma in the book Emma by Jane Austin (she liked it before Friends made it famous). Ruth is the name of Krista's grandmother that passed away suddenly five weeks before we married. We had the name picked out at least a couple years ago. And because I'm sure someone will wonder or ask, I'll address usage now also. I'm not worried how you want to use the first and middle names. I'll leave it up to you. Personally, I have always loved the sound of the old Southern double name. I will likely call her "Emma Ruth" most of the time and "Emma" the rest of the time. I don't see me using Ruth as a standalone name for her though as she gets older she may choose one or the other and I'll oblige. And her name is not Emma-Ruth (hyphenated) so it is not mandatory that you call her such. Emma is fine if you prefer.
The official "It's a Girl!" image.

Emma's hand outstretched in a Gator Chomp (seen from above). Go Gators!

These two show her laying on her side. Her head is to the right and facing up. her backbone is visible as she is curled to the top in a sort of "U" shape. The light spots in the dark fluid above her mouth are her little toes (or maybe fingers) just peeking into the plane of the image.And she was very bouncy too. When they first started poking around she was not interested in moving at all. She looked like she was sleeping. She was basically still. As the second ultrasound was performed, she started bouncing around. She was all over the place! Sometimes the doctor would stop to measure something or to change a setting and the transducer would sit still for a second and you could see her legs kicking or her arms waving or once we got to see her open and close her mouth a couple times. It was incredible. I loved every second of it. Thanks to her movement, we got lots of different views of her. Very fun. I could do that all day. It's probably a good thing ultrasounds cost several thousand dollars. I'd have one in a heart beat and just sit there watching our baby. I don't know her exact orientation in this picture or what the various structures are, but I still love it because that's my kid! If I had to guess, this looks like an image taken as they were looking for her heart. The small dark circle in the large round gray part on the right is either a blood-filled artery leaving the heart or the stomach filled with amniotic fluid. The heart would be just below this image if it's an artery or above if it's the stomach. That means the gray area around the dark circle is her chest. Her backbone is the three white spots in a triangle on the right side of the image. She is facing left with her head bowed in this image. That is possibly the back of her head on the left as she is looking down (into your monitor). By the way, her heart was amazing. We got to see all four chambers as they functioned flawlessly. That was one of the coolest moments for me personally. I actually got to sit there and watch her heart beat and could see in slow motion (thanks to the doc) the valves moving. So cool.

1 comment:

Casey Wilson said...

Aw, that's so sweet, Brandon. I can't wait to meet my niece!