The Adventure of the Unknown Due Date

I've been reading Sherlock Holmes of late – I borrowed the "collection": all four novels, all fifty-six adventures – and since I'm in mystery mode, I wanted to cast our recent "adventure" in the Holmesian style. Unfortunately, I lack an essential element which would allow me to get the dorky-wittiness out of my head and into writing (i.e. I never was a very good joke teller).

For those of you who haven't heard, we're presently expecting our third bundle of baby. Up until this afternoon we had no idea how far along we were/are. I'm still breastfeeding BB so I haven't had a period since before I got pregnant with her. Of course, I know that breastfeeding doesn't prevent pregnancy, but we weren't trying to prevent anything! So it's been at least six weeks since we first suspected; and at least four weeks since we've known (via those convenient little home pregnancy pee sticks). Some of our friends, who are the kind of people who know the second that they're pregnant and can give a better estimate of their due date than their doc, have had a hearty laugh at our expense. I, for one, say, what's a few weeks here and there for the first visit – they're just going to poke and prod you anyway. The real fun begins at 20-weeks when you get the sonogram. (The doppler's pretty cool too though.)

Yesterday was my poke-and-prod appt. After my full physical (and all those tiresome questions about family medical history), I got to hear the baby's heartbeat. (The first appt usually takes upwards of two hours and we didn't think the girls could handle waiting so Drew took them to run errands.) In obstetric terms that means the baby's at least 10-weeks; otherwise, the uterus is still nestled in the pelvis and the doc can't hear or feel anything. We also did a brief internal sonogram, but the nurse practitioner didn't quite know how to work the machine to get the proper measurements. So for a better estimate (of the due date), they decided to refer me over to a professional ultrasound office – and that appt was this afternoon.

I'm forever in awe of the Doppler Effect and how it relates to obstetric ultrasounds. I mean what did people do before they had such things? Guess? :) The technician expertly looked at everything in about 20 minutes: my uterus and ovaries, the placenta, and different parts of the baby. For those of you dying to know, it's still too early to determine the sex of the baby – and we're *not* finding out this time anyway. But, probably most importantly, we're calculated as being 13 weeks and 2 days. That puts us at a due date of about 2 June 2008.

Sorry about the quality. We don't have a scanner here so I took a picture of the picture. Lighting was a problem and the paper was wavy (because they print the picture using heat?) so you get all those strange shadows. One of them might even be my head.