Awesome >

I do actually quite like Sam, and occasionally I like to imply as much. While it’s all a bit OTT (have you read most of those cards? ICK!), seems as good a time a year as any to buy a bunch of pink heart-covered crap.

In the spirit of, here are some random V-Day links that have wibbled my frusset pouch in the past week or so. Most of them are FOOD because a) I like it and b) it’s dinner time and I’m waiting for Sam to finish the dishes so I can cook.

• OH MY GOSH they’re holding hands!
• Punny
• Exactly what I wanted. However did you know?!
• No. Nonono, no
• Yes. Oh sweet jebus yes
• I approve, with my whole stomach
• Delicious love-filled bacon

OK, time to go make delicious Valentines salmon and misc vegetables. Later, suckas.

I know I said I wouldn’t do the whole week.day post thing, but there’s still a midwife appointment to go in week 19, so you’re stuck with it.

For now though, this is the remix of the scan DVD we got. I was going to go all out cheesey but decided to show a tiny bit of class. TINY BIT.

19.4 update: Midwife appointment

Broken down, bullet style:

• Our midwife was at a birth, but I saw one of the others working at the practice and she was lovely too. LOVELY. What did I do to land ‘lovely’ instead of the surely deserved grumpy monobrowed frau in tweed and scarily tight braids?
• Apparently I have put on only 500g in 6 weeks. Since this is obviously WRONG I am forced to conclude the scales were out last time, and I missed an opportunity to feel good about weighing less than I thought I did. And now I weigh more. But given that I feel hugely distended already, less than I thought I would.
• My blood pressure has gone down, and it wasn’t high to begin with. Apparently my heart works good!
• According to the scanwich, I have an anterior placenta. Which means it’s adding to my frontal fat-pad and the alien’s nested behind it. Which in turn means I probably won’t feel the little flutters everyone else goes on about (so that’s why! Not that it keeps me from feeling the right hooks and roundhouse kicks apparently), and might feel less overall movement than ‘normal’ people with their posterior placenta…s…es. Also there’s some possibility that labour might be more difficult and painful and yaddah yaddah, but we’ll cross that bridge when we get there.
• We didn’t go over the results of my test from last time, but I’m fairly sure I saw ‘REVOLTINGLY HEALTHY!11one!’ scrawled on the printouts, so it’s probably safe to assume I don’t have HIV or a UTI or weird proteins or whatever else it was I got tested for.

Sorry to disappoint!

Today we had our anatomy scan, which was kind of nerve-wracking, cause the alien is big enough now for them to spot any abnormalities (which naturally one imagines to be copious and profound). It took quite a while, even longer than usual because I had to be re-rescanned in order to record bits to DVD (apparently someone forgot to push RECORD the first couple of times). We did this for you. Yes you!

Here are some pictures, 2 months on from the last:

It almost has human shapes this time!

But still kind of alien.

See? That’s its face. RAR!

I said GOOD DAY!

So yes. Very cute. It squiggled a lot and wiggled away from the tech, and had its hands in front of its face, again. It also had its mouth open most of the time so obviously takes after Sam. AND it had a wee while we were pootling around, cause its bladder was full in one scan and not in another. Yay alien wees. I’m not entirely sure whether that makes me happy or not. >.> Oh! And it seems I had a contraction during the last scan. I choose not to worry about this, but the doc did make note of it. The alien was kicking me though, so I blame it for any reactions my body may have had.

SEX

“It?” I hear you ask.

Well… eh… see, the thing with babies is, they’re little. And the thing with ultrasounds is, they’re not really clear. It’s apparently quite difficult to get an absolutely certain result unless the alien is definitely and obviously a boy, since it’s easier to see something that’s there than it is to see something that’s… not… there.

Boys, apparently, have ‘hot dogs’ or ‘turtles’ while girls have ‘cheese burgers’, ‘tacos’ or three what I choose to call ‘lines of awesome’ (as in “How many lines of awesome did you see in your scan? None? Oh, must be a boy.”) These don’t like… jump out and hit you in the face or anything (haha), but at a couple of points during the scan it kinda looks like they might kind of be there, kind of. Sorry kid, you’re not even born and already I’m Britney-ing you on the intarwebs:

This is looking up from underneath, sausagey things being the leggies. The little bubbly thing in that region that does sort of look like a boy bit is apparently the umbilical cord. Eww.

So the tech checked twice, then the doctor came in and checked again, then he scanned again for the dvd. So since all four of those passes resulted in the same conclusion, we’re probably safe in believing them.

It went something like:

“Well… I think it’s a girl. See here? Here you would see the boy bits.” (I love that she said it that way, incidentally).

Then the doc came in and looked at it from a bunch of different angles, and he couldn’t find anything ’sticking out’. So he said he’d bet on it being a girl, but not that he’d bet an entire bedroom of pink furniture or anything. Which is good, cause neither would we.

So yay, girl! Which is good, cause I never really pictured it being a boy, and it might have taken some adjustment. (Fully preparing in case it happens to come out a boy though, cause the universe, as I’ve mentioned, loves to have fun).

To celebrate, we went and picked out some girly baby clothes. No, we’re not going to get carried away, we just wanted to mark the occasion. You guys can still totally buy piles of cute things. Only, I beg of you, not too much pink. Oh god, the pink.

That didn’t stop us from buying pink though! Look how cute!

Oh my gosh it’s a tiny little Pooh hoody. Awesome. Even Sam got into the baby clothes thing this time, although he is a little more circumspect. I don’t think there is any chance of us turning into those people who have a full and complete nursery of 10 billion baby things ready months in advance, but at least she’ll have a hoody to wear while she sleeps in a drawer (kidding).

Naming

This one was easy. After throwing a couple of names at Sam and having them bounce off, I said:

“Well, what about Amélie?”

And thus it was.

Where did it come from? Well, we’re quite fond of the works of Jean-Pierre Jeunet (The City of Lost Children is one of my favourite films)… and now some of you may see where this is going. One of his more famous films is Amélie, which we loved: besides the cute story, the main character is quirky and adorable. The name is classic and sounds respectable (obviously coming from the same family as Emily and Amelia while not being quite as boring as either), and a little bit unusual without being retarded. Plus it lends itself to a zillion nicknames. A ZILLION!

In deference to the fact we don’t live in France we may have to learn to live without the accent though. >.>

I’m working on compressing the DVD (6 mins worth) to a size where it’s Youtubable, so expect an update in the next wee while. I’m sure this will do you for now though, I need dinner. :D

I SEEEES YOU! BYES!

AKA the day mother tried to kill me with rose loppers. Good thing they only grazed my neck and arm and didn’t fall on my HEAD or anything. Anyway, photos.

I ated our first passionfruit fruit!

Bee relaxed, Fizz did her very special thing.

Mother’s elderly dog was old, mother… less so.