Daddy Gets His Kicks, and A Decision is Made

It was a small thing, but I felt it was a very momentous event: Aaron felt the baby for the first time this morning. We had slept in a little, since it was Presidents' Day and we both had the day off work, and when I woke up I could feel the baby twitching around, more than usual. So I rolled over on my back and started trying to see if I could feel it from the outside. Aaron noticed me staring at the ceiling in concentration, and asked what was wrong; so I took his hand and put it on my little bump, just below the belly button, and started telling him whenever I felt movement from the inside. Fortunately, baby cooperated, and after about 30 seconds of "There's one," "Nope..." "There's one," "Nope..." I felt a big kick, toward the outside of my belly, and almost at the same time, I said, "There's a big one!" and Aaron said, "I felt that!"  Then we lay there, smiling at each other. It was a very sweet, tender moment.

Since we had the day off, I had scheduled my latest (and possibly last) ultrasound for 1pm that afternoon. My mom had come to the last ultrasound, so Aaron asked if he could invite his mom, Melanie, to watch this one with us. This ultrasound was also somewhat more important because we had to decide whether or not we were going to find out the gender of our baby. We had been talking about it for weeks, and it was a hard decision. We kind of wanted it both ways: we wanted to find out because all our friends and family have been asking, but then we also really liked the idea of being surprised and sharing the news with everyone on the day of our child's birth. My dad is the one who really planted it in my mind. He had two points in favor of not finding out: for one thing, as he put it, how many really good surprises can you actually plan on in life? and for another, he said, it's much more fun to call everyone and say, It's a boy, or It's a girl! instead of, Well, he's here, and he weighs this much. So I was fairly strongly in favor of letting the gender be a surprise, and that day, in the car on the way to the appointment, that's what we decided - we're not going to find out. Of course, when the ultrasound was over, Aaron couldn't help asking the tech, "We still don't want to know, but do you know? Could you tell?" and she said, "Oh yeah, I can tell, I know for sure."  ...So Aaron thinks it's a boy, but I feel the argument could be easily flipped - she may have had such a good view that she saw there was definitely nothing there, and knew for sure it was a girl. I guess we'll find out!

So here's a couple of head shots of our little Vogel:

In both images, the white curved line at the bottom of the torso is his or her little spine, the little circle above the torso is a little fist, and especially in the bottom image, you can see a little dark circular spot in the middle of the torso, near to baby's chin - that's a little heart that was beating while we watched. Yes, I cried a little again. It's incredible every time I look at it. This little person is only about 6.5 inches long from head to little bottom (the legs are always curled or bent up, so it's too hard to measure head-to-foot), and weighs about 10 ounces, and everything is already almost fully formed, inside and out. I love you, baby, and can't wait to meet you.