Week 33: Pineapple

According to BabyCenter, Bean weighs over 4 pounds this week and has passed the 17-inch mark. She's rapidly losing that wrinkled, alien look (their words, not mine) and her skeleton is hardening. The bones in her skull aren't fused together, which allows them to move and slightly overlap, thus making it easier for her to fit through the birth canal. (Hey, whatever's supposed to help in that department!)

Now, as much as we look forward to and appreciate the weekly BabyCenter updates (and we really do), we still couldn't help but wonder- What exactly is going on in there? I guess we were spoiled, because toward the beginning of the pregnancy it seemed like we were getting an ultrasound at every OB visit. We were able to check on Bean, which was very comforting. Since our 20 week visit, we get to listen to heartbeat at our check-ups. And while this is awesome in and of itself, we have missed seeing her. Curiosity finally got the better of us, so we decided to get a 4D ultrasound this past weekend.

I first heard about this technology when Lisa was pregnant with the Peanuts. We were blown away by how detailed the images were, compared to regular ultrasound images. Since then, we've known other couples who have had this done, and by all accounts it really does give you a glimpse of what your baby will look like once he or she is born. So if you're as curious as we were to see what Bean looks like, I'm posting a short clip of the video from our session. At that time, she was head down, facing up. She stuck out her tongue, yawned, played with her feet, and even sucked her thumb. :) Brian was kind enough to provide times of some of the "highlights" in this clip, in case you want to fast-forward to them:

:19 - sticks out tongue
:48 - hand by face
1:01 - heartbeat
1:17 - yawn
1:26 - foot
1:42 - another yawn
1:53 - fingers
2:24 - foot again

Or, you could just watch the whole thing. :)

Bean's first movie trailer - hee!

Pretty crazy, huh? It will be interesting to see how much she resembles these images once we get to see her for real, but this is pretty cool for now! I just love that you can make out so much of her- facial features, fingers and toes, hair even! And it was so fascinating to watch her move around! And it's fun- now I can picture what she might be doing in there whenever I feel her move. We could have watched her for hours!

So that's our little Bean! We think she's pretty darn cute already, even given the orangey blob factor. Then again, we may be a little biased. ;)

In other news, a couple of announcements:

First, we have a new nephew! Yay! Congratulations to Shelby, Michael, and Sara on their new addition to the family. We can't wait to meet you, Nicholas! :)

And, we are celebrating a dogiversary today! We adopted Dakota three years ago today. :)

"Hi, I'm cute!"

We love you, Doogles! Even though you feel the need to roll around in cat poop sometimes.*

* Seriously though, try not to do that anymore, cuz that's just really, really gross.