Heartbeats

So yesterday the Little Kitty and I went to our (her) first sonogram appointment. It was pretty cool. The place was at a brand spankin' new hospital, so everything was really nice.

Upon awakening that morning I proceeded to go and get a full physical/blood test/checkup since I'm supposed to start being all "responsible" now, and then proceeded to work from home. I had taken the day away from the office since I had that appointment in the morning and the baby appointment in the afternoon.

So yesterday afternoon at 2 o'clock we drove up to the hospital, about 5 miles and 2 tolls away, for our appointment. I made the comment that once the baby came I was finally going to have an excuse to drive at excessive speeds. This turned out to be a mistake, as the wife chided me for the remark and said that I would proceed to kill us all if I did that (but don't worry, I still plan on making it to the hospital in at least 1/2 the time it took us to get there this time).

Anyways, back to our story. We arrived at the hospital and proceeded to the Gates of OBGYN's and Labs. Behold:

So we went in, she filled out a bunch of paperwork, and we waited. Me, being the patient waiter that I am, got some water, played with the camera, and generally fiddled around as usual. Finally (aka: about 10 minutes) we got called in to the ultrasound room. The Little Kitty laid on a table and they smeared her with some weird jelly stuff. This was followed by turning on a giant machine attached to a strange little wand and the lady put the wand on her belly.

Presto! Upon the screen appears and warped black and white, grainy picture of my wife's lovely innards. Did you know they can zoom in and stuff now? Ultrasound Lady zoomed way in and there it was! Our baby. And you could see the heart pumping away! How cool is that? My favorite part was what came next though.

Did you know that ultrasound wands have microphones now?

Ultrasound Lady turned on the microphone and you could hear the "thupwumpthupwupthupwump" of an itty-bitty heart plowin' by at 150 beats a minute. You could see it too! That was really cool.

Once I get my scanner back online I'll post the picture of the ultrasound.

So next (wow, this is a long post), we went back and waited some more, then got called to the Gyno's office for her to talk to us about the pregnancy and what was going on and all that good stuff. They even gave us a copy of What to Expect When You're Expecting and a bunch of other informational stuff. We also found out that at our 20 week ultrasound that they give us a DVD of the ultrasound! Sweet! New hospitals are win.

After this I was kicked out of the room so that they could do their Boys Not Allowed stuff, and we went home. And now, we finally get to tell everybody! We had been keeping it a not-telling-everbody-but-who-we-really-felt-like-we-needed-to thing, but no more! Yey!

I'm really excited about becoming a dad.

Release the beast!