Smile for the camera! 31 weeks, 1 day in utero

This morning we went to the University of Washington to their high-risk maternity care ward. Everyone there wasn't has relentlessly cheerful as they were at Children's, but they were quite nice and very good. We met with the Nurse Practitioner and OB-GYN we will be working with, and their obvious ability, competence, and assurance was very comforting to see. They didn't pull any punches or sugar-coat anything, but were straightforward and factual without being condescending. That group only deals with high-risk pregnancies, and many of those appear to be heart-related. We again didn't learn much new about the baby's condition, but we learned a lot about the hospital and what we could expect there. We spoke with a social worker as well, who was quite helpful and upbeat.

But the highlight of the visit was the ultrasound. The technician wasn't very chatty, but she was nice and captured and printed some really good pictures for us. The first picture is a profile of our baby: you can see him looking up, with his heat taking up the right 2/3 of the image.

What a handsome lad! What a nicely shaped head! When he was having his skull measured, they gave approximate date-equivalences for normal growth. While his body measurements were almost exactly equal to his actual age, his skull measurements were about 2 weeks ahead. He has a big head - just like daddy. :-)

The ultrasound machine had the ability to make multiple scans simultaneously, and then stack them up using software to create a 3-dimensional image, which then the technician was able to print out. These are the pictures we like the best. In the first one, you can see that he has his father's nose and his mother's lips. And nicely fat cheeks.



In the next one, you can see how he was comfortably pillowing his head on his hands. I think I like this one the most - he looks so comfortable and cute.



In the last photo little Pat is showing respect for his uncle Aid by saluting. You can really tell he's his father's son: he has his father's nose and his double chin.


The doctor told us that we want him to be healthy and full-term when he is born, a goal we plan to meet. He again checked out as completely normal in all ways except for that pesky left-heart thing. She also told us the calculations have him at approximately 4 lbs, 3 oz., and is in the 61st percentile for babies this age.

Before we left Pui got a flu shoot and gave some blood, and we made 5 more appointments over the next six weeks. We are going to become very familiar with the University of Washington hospital in the next two months!