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The Belly at 32 Weeks + Heartbeat Sounds

The weeks keep flying by. This week we’re really starting to work on nursery organization and decoration, but nothing to report on that front just yet. Instead, some new belly photos and an audio recording of the baby’s heartbeat!

This weekend I was at a party and another pregnant person said, "How far along are you? You look like you're due any minute now." I said, "Only 32 weeks." She said, "Oh." Then it was awkward for a second.

A closer view. Because sometimes it's hard to really appreciate the proportions from afar.

The heartbeat sounds, below, were recorded via our Sonoline B Fetal Prenatal Doppler, which has been a really great tool to have around for the last several months. It was super cheap on Amazon (relative to other products in this space), and well worth the investment as far as we’re concerned.

Click here to listen to baby’s heartbeat from 6/21/10

It’s Already the Third Trimester

And I can’t believe it has gone by this quickly!

I’m at 29 weeks now, just about as big as a house, and August 15th is right around the corner. We’ve also been awfully busy lately (isn’t everyone?) so there’s a lot to catch you up on. I’ll do most of it with photos:

I can literally put a bowl of ice cream on my belly and it won't fall off. Unless baby kicks it.

The aforementioned ice cream.

From the front, so that you can appreciate the full impact. Some people have pregnant bellies that look like basketballs. I have more of a giant inflatable beach ball. And by 40 weeks I'm pretty sure it'll be like an extra-large yoga ball. The kind you can sit on and use as a chair.

I know, I know. All this new age hippie nonsense about hypnobirthing is ridiculous. Plus that baby photo on the front of the book is CREEPY. But listen, the book says, "normal birthing does not have to involve pain." Outrageous, but as someone facing the birthing process, there's something very appealing about that statement. I'm choosing to believe it.

Because baby gets to hear my voice all day long, we started doing a little evening storytime to get him used to the sound of Eric's voice. Before we go to bed, Eric reads a chapter from Stuart Little to my belly. We're pretty sure baby enjoys it as much as we do.

And that’s pretty much the update on baby/pregnancy stuff. I’m still feeling pretty good with the exception of the giant hippopotamus feet that I get every evening. I thought about showing you a picture of that, but it’s really too freakish and terrible to show on the internet.

In non-pregnancy news, a couple of other things happened to family Harding in the past few months:

I graduated from Georgetown Public Policy Institute with a Master of Public Policy degree. After 3 years, all I really learned is that I don’t actually want a career in public policy. Massive amounts of tuition money well-spent.
I started a new job. My new firm has a policy against blogging about it by name, but it’s this totally awesome political advocacy communications firm in Georgetown. They only work with Democrats and progressive non-profits, so there’s a really good cause behind 100% of the client work we take on. Plus, they have great benefits and are a wonderful environment. The biggest proof of that: they hired me at 6 months pregnant. I am heading up project management for their digital group, which is fun so far.

You may wonder how in the world I’ve managed to keep it together with so much going on. The answer:

The cutest, kindest, most patient husband in the world.

Eric has been such a great partner throughout this pregnancy, picking up extra chores around the house, cooking dinner most nights, rubbing my poor swollen feet and bringing me ice cream when I need it (which is rather frequently). I’m so lucky!

Second Trimester — 2 Comments
25
Mar 10

It’s a BOY!

Can you believe it? We were all convinced it was going to be a girl, but then there it was on the sonogram, clear as day. “Look how bright and sticking-out it is,” said the sonogram tech.

Yup, that is a baby boy in there.

Because we’d somehow convinced ourselves it would be a girl, this news was quite a shock. After the initial shock, I thought:

Oooh. I wish we hadn’t told everyone we wanted a girl. They’re going to think I hate my baby.
A baby boy! That’s awesome! Having a son is going to be pretty awesome.
I have no idea how to grow up into a man, as I have never done that before. How will I raise this baby?

I know, I know. Ridiculous. It was just such an overwhelming rush of emotion and surprise and extreme happiness — kind of like finding out we were pregnant all over again. Except this time we were pregnant with a “he.” And much much more importantly, he is healthy and beautiful and practically perfect in every way.

He has a perfect spine, and two arms and two legs with ten fingers and ten toes. That’s about all I could make out on the ultrasound (Oh, and he has a head. I definitely saw a head.), but apparently a trained professional can see all kinds of details in that fuzzy gray mess. They identified the liver, kidneys, spleen, and stomach. We saw the four chambers of the heart pumping blood, measured the curvature of those two tiny feet to make sure they weren’t clubbed (they’re not) and even measured the size of the cerebellum inside the brain (it’s normal).

I’m going to say that one more time in case you didn’t hear me: we could even see inside his brain with this sonogram. Whaaaaat? Medical technology is just astonishing.

So I’m sure you’re anxious to see this perfect baby boy, but I have to warn you the photos are not great. We got all the angles the doctors needed to confirm that he’s healthy, but that kid did not want to pose for a glamour shot. Even after the nice lady conducting the test bashed the sonogram wand into my belly with the vigor of a kid on a trampoline, Baby Boy Harding did not want to adjust his very comfortable position to show us his precious face.

As a result, we have the two photos below:

He's a belly sleeper, just like his momma.

If you can't tell, he's laying on his left side in this one. That's a round little belly on the left side of the photo and a face on the right.

So, in the above photo we’re kind of getting a reflection of the baby’s skull instead of a more photographic image of his face. That makes it look kind of creepy and scary, but it does have the benefit of preserving the mystery a little longer. We have no clue what he looks like. In this image, all we can see is that he looks like he’s wearing a mask. I think this mask makes him look like The Flash, and Eric thinks it makes him look like a Mexican wrestler. I’ll let you be the judge:

From left to right: Superhero Baby Harding, The Flash, Nacho Libre.

And although I think the costuming is more Flash-like, the joke’s on our kid if he thinks that’s his destiny. If you’ve seen me or Eric (try to) run, you know what I mean. I can’t rule out the wrestler thing, though…

Belly Shots / Second Trimester — 4 Comments
22
Feb 10

The Belly at 14 Weeks

In recent weeks, some of you have asked for pictures of my belly. Since we haven’t had any real baby news lately (no doc appointments in the past couple of weeks), I thought I’d oblige and share some snapshots of my growing frame. It was either that or a detailed account of all my symptoms. I figured this was a much kinder topic for my friends who haven’t yet been pregnant. The less you know about the details, the better.

However, I’m still at the stage where it’s very hard to distinguish between “bloated and pudgy” to “maybe she’s pregnant,” so depending on my posture and outfit photographic results will vary. So far, I look like this:

14 Weeks. This is only the beginning!

And when Eric mocks my belly-happy self-portrait session, causing me to give him my “Hey, this is serious business!” look, I look like this:

Don't make fun of me! Where's your revealing personal blog post, buddy? Huh? That's what I thought.

And from the front, half-smiling awkwardly (because, after all, it’s a little awkward to stand around taking photos of your fat belly), I look like this:

There used to be a distinguishable waist in there somewhere. Ah, the good old days.

For the gender-predicting types among you: that’s the most evidence you’re going to get. Place your bets now, because we find out for sure on March 22nd. SO excited for that appointment!

First Trimester / Second Trimester — 2 Comments
8
Feb 10

It has a FACE!!

Today the baby is officially at 12 weeks, which is quite a milestone. At this point, many of the really serious risks a normal pregnancy faces are downgraded from up-all-night-worrying to almost negligible. We are also entering the second trimester, where my symptoms are predicted to shift from nausea and vomiting to dizziness and headaches. According to everything I’ve read, that’s an upgrade.

According to this headache I’ve had for two days, I might prefer the occasional vomiting. The jury is still out.

But the very best part of being at 12 weeks is that this morning I got to have a nuchal translucency screening. This was great news because the doctor was able to confirm that the baby does not have any significiant risk for Down syndrome, based solely on a single measurement they take via external ultrasound. Easiest baby test ever.

That diagnostic ultrasound also meant I got to see the baby today, and it looks like a real human baby now! I couldn’t believe it — there was a little nose and chin, and flailing arms and kicking legs. It was just like you see on TV, except this one is REAL AND INSIDE MY UTERUS. I teared up a little. I may never stop being amazed at how purely bizarre and wonderful it is to be carrying a new life inside me. I may also be a person who speaks about motherhood in hyperbolic and clichéd terms. For now, I blame that on the hormones.

I’ve also had my first “was that the baby or just a muscle spasm?” moments this week. Now, every time I sneeze, I get this weird feeling in my lower abdomen that is, well … weird. If I didn’t know there was a fetus floating around in amniotic fluid down there, I’d say it felt like a school of very tiny goldfish fighting over some food. In my bladder. But I think it might be the baby freaking out and thrashing because it is very concerned about the body-convulsing sneeze it just endured.

Or maybe it’s just gas.

Anyway, here’s a nice profile shot from our latest ultrasound photos. Look at that FACE!!

Snapshot of Baby Harding at 12 weeks. Looking good, little one!

First Trimester — 1 Comment
23
Dec 09

Confirming the Pregnancy

So a few weeks ago I took a pregnancy test and it said “Pregnant.” Actually I took somewhere between 9 and 11 tests during an eight-day stretch where I was SO SURE it was true but the tests weren’t with me. Eventually, I got the response I was waiting for.

It was pretty exciting to see the little pee stick test confirm our suspicions, but it was way cooler to visit the doctor and see an ultrasound photo confirming that we really truly weren’t crazy. I’d been tired, but hadn’t felt any real pregnancy symptoms yet. It didn’t quite feel true until we saw the photo.

Of course, at this point it didn’t look like anything. But our slightly-flaky-yet-very-brusque OB told us it all looked quite normal. We were definitely pregnant.

See that little white dot right there? That's ... something. Something important, I think.

Okay on this one there's just nothing distinguishable at all. But apparently this is what things should look like at 6 weeks.

One Mohr Hardinga pregnancy blog