23 Week Update & New Photos

We had our follow up ultrasound today to correspond with our 23 week update. The goal of the ultrasound was to measure the brain and get a photo of a fetal face. Well, we definitely have a stubborn child. The tech had to work to get a shot of the face, but even then it's hard to see.

Here's what's going on this week:

Turn on the radio and sway to the music. With her sense of movement well developed by now, your baby can feel you dance. And now that she's more than 11 inches long and weighs just over a pound (about as much as a large mango), you may be able to see her squirm underneath your clothes. Blood vessels in her lungs are developing to prepare for breathing, and the sounds that your baby's increasingly keen ears pick up are preparing her for entry into the outside world. Loud noises that become familiar now — such as your dog barking or the roar of the vacuum cleaner — probably won't faze her when she hears them outside the womb.

The fun part about the visit was that we could see her moving on the ultrasound screen. She told us that we we're "#1 Parents" that or she, too, enjoys the "#1 song" (she held up her pointer finger, like she was 1). She also stuck her tongue out at us. Both grandmothers were able to come with us as well. Here are the pictures from Kaylynn's latest photo shoot. I didn't post them all, as some were really hard to see. They did confirm that she is still a girl.

Here you can see her little face. Because of her positioning, it's kind of a weird looking picture. The two dark areas are her eye sockets - eyelids are still fused shut at this point, so you couldn't see her eyes anyways. Then under that is her mouth and she was sticking her tongue out at us. We actually watched it go out and then go back in. It was pretty cool. The big round thing underneath her head is her stomach, but because of the way she's laying, you can't see her neck - YES she has one.

Here's another view of her little head. She's yawning in this one. I think this one looks more like an actual baby and is cuter than the other one. Just my opinion. Her arms are up around her head right now too, but it's blurry and hard to see.

We won't get another one of these until we're 30-something weeks. Which, oddly enough, is only around 10+ weeks away...weird when you think of being 10 weeks pregnant and no one really knows that you are yet! Also, weird to think about when you are considered "full-term" (and therefore on pins and needles because they can come any day) around 37-38 weeks. 42 weeks is the full gestation period, anytime after that, the baby is overdue. So if my Aggie math is right, that means we're 14 weeks away from being full-term. Yikes!