20 Weeks

My 20 week scan was a couple of weeks ago and everything was more or less exactly as it should be. Here's the picture:



The scan took quite a bit longer than the 12-week one, but it wasn't really a hardship gazing at the image of Offspring while a sonographer pointed out all the various organs that were positioned and working exactly as they should be. The baby was awake and wiggling at first, but seemed to fall asleep while the checks were being done on the head and face area, and then absolutely would not move to allow the sonographer to check the kidneys. In the end I was sent to the loo in the hope that it would wake the baby up enough to move just a little, which worked, but only just. That was a good thing too, though, as it enabled Steve to feel a certain amount of paternal pride that his child is taking after him.

The baby was measuring just a couple of days smaller than the exact average, but still well within the healthy/average range. From what we were told, the important bit is that a baby's growth is proportional all over, and a couple of days is neither here nor there.

Of course we're both completely besotted. Every hand or foot was without question the most wonderful hand or foot ever to have been seen, because sure, most babies probably have hands and feet, but no matter what their parents think, Steve and I know for a fact that these hands and feet are just cuter.

And here's the outside view at 20 weeks:



(I decided to ditch the leggings-and-vest combo for the photos. It made me too self-conscious and it's not like the internet really needs another exact sequence of matching bump pictures. It's also not like there are any other photos of me while I'm pregnant, so I'd rather that I'm happy with the ones that do exist.)

20 weeks marks the half-way point of pregnancy and we might have made a bigger deal of it if we hadn't spent the last few weeks grumbling along with a horrible cold, which was not only giving us bunged up noses and sore throats during the day, but also causing us to more or less continuously wake each other up throughout the night with coughing fits. It's better now, though, so I'm trying to think more about the end of this month, which will mark the point at which, should this baby try to appear early, it would be considered viable and have a chance of survival outside the womb.