It's a . . .

. . . baby. Yes folks, it's a baby. We had our second-trimester ultrasound survey a couple days ago, which among other things is when they start offering to try to tell you the sex of the baby. After some complex thinking that may or may not be a topic for future posts, we decided not to find out (at least now). So, it's a baby! And more importantly, it's a healthy baby in all the ways that they can tell at this stage.

So here's the little future rugrat in his/her/its updated mug shot. This time facing to the top left, in profile. The dense (whiter) bit center-left is the lower part of the jaw and face, a divot for the eye-socket, and the bright arc from there around from 10-o'clock to 6-o'clock is presumably the skull. There's a C-shaped blur in the middle there that kind of suggests an ear, but for all I know could be some mid-brain structure given the depth of the imaged scan.

Things that we "saw" in the ultrasound:
. two arms with hands with fingers, substantially close to five fingers per hand
. two legs, with feet with toes, substantially close to five toes per foot
. a head with a face, and a brain inside (they assured us)
. a stomach, kidneys, and a liver. Christi thinks also a bladder, which was apparently hard to find.
. at least one femur, which was measured for length (a couple centimeters, if I caught it right)
. a spine and a buncha ribs, which were some of the coolest things as you (or at least I) could imagine the structure as the technician scanned deeper and shallower across them
. a working, pumping heart (straight-on 150 beats-per-minute) with multiple chambers
. an "aortic curve", I think, which is the major blood vessel leaving the top of the heart and curving down into the body cavity.

Yay parts! Apparently they all look healthy/nominal/good, which made us happy. In a growing tradition, we went for ice cream afterward.