We're having a girl!!

As Sarah posted on our blog, we had our ultrasound on Thursday and are thrilled to announce we'll be having a baby girl. It was an unbelievable experience to watch my 8 inch daugther move around on the screen, showing us her toes, thumbs, arms and all the other appendages that she seems just as enthralled by. We would of course been just as excited to have a boy, but it's wonderful to finally be able to start referring to our baby as "her" instead of "it." My world feels like it's been completely changed and I didn't know I could be this happy. It's pretty wonderful. I hope you enjoy the following pics, though they are not nearly as great as watching her move in real time.

I love the shot of her little foot! As I look at the other two, I'm reminded of a scene from the West Wing I saw recently. Toby is looking at the ultrasound of his twins when the technician announces, "Mr. Ziegler, here are your babies' heads." To which he reacts with much more emotion than his character usually shows, "My babies have heads!" That's what I felt like saying each time we saw something new, like the four chambers of the heart, the spine, her thumbs, her nose, ears, toes, etc. I've always thought of the creation of life to be a miracle, but now that it's actually happening to me, it seems to be even more than a miracle, though I don't quite know what word to use.

These are some of the 4D pictures of my daughter. They didn't turn out amazingly well since she's still so young (18 weeks). The tech said that if she had been around 24 weeks, we would have been able to see her features really well, but at this point, they all just look like old men.