The Excitement is Building!

As you can tell, I'm very excited for this little one and am eager for Easter to arrive! The first doctors appointment put my fears to rest, for the moment. It was reassuring to see the baby's tiny little body on the ultrasound and see their little heart pumping away. I just can't wait to actually hear the heartbeat! They didn't want to do the doppler ultrasound yet on the heart til the baby is a bit more developed. But the rate was 152 bpm (beats-per-minute) and they said this was a good strong number! Linda has another appointment scheduled for September 9th, I believe. But this will be a general checkup and get some things out of the way, but not an ultrasound that go around. I'm gonna try and go to that appointment as well, but depends if I can get the time off work...

This week is our 8th week of pregnancy! Every week that passes makes me feel more and more comfortable and less anxious and stressed about it. Not to say that I'm not worried. If I let myself dwell on something too long, my brain can imagine all sorts of situations that will make me worry for months on end. But according to my email updates I get from BabyCenter, this week McNugget is about the size of a kidney bean! Webbed toes and fingers are starting to poke their way from their feet and hands... Eyelids are practically covering the eyes now and breathing tubes extend down from the throat to the branches of the developing lungs. McNugget did show to have a tail in the ultrasound, and this week it will almost be gone. The nerve cells in the brain are branching out to connect with one another, forming primitive nueral pathways. The external genitals are still developing, but it's still too early to see what gender the baby is...even though the sex of the baby has already been deciphered at conception! McNugget is constantly moving and shifting in the womb, although it's still way to early for Linda to feel that movement.

My dad has a strong inclination that McNugget is going to be a boy, so much so that he has already began referring to McNugget as his future grandson! He guessed right with my niece when my sister was pregnant 13 years ago. My sister also said she had a strong feeling this was a boy too. I, too, have had that gut feeling...but it maybe just me hoping more for a boy than a girl. Linda said she didn't have a feeling one way or another. My niece said she thought this will be a girl. Either way, I don't care what the sex is, just as long as they are healthy! Linda & I have picked out an early favorite for a boy's name, Evan William. Yes, like the whiskey. I had liked the name Evan even before we were pregnant. William is my middle name, and my dad's first name. So it also has a traditional family name feel to it... It does seem befitting to name him Evan William. If our math is correct, when we conceived, it was the night of a friend's wedding and the father of the bride was pulling us and other friends out to the parking lot to do shots from the bottle of Evan Williams he had for the occasion. If our gut instinct is true and this is a boy and we do go with this name - we probably won't share that tidbit with him til he is much older!