Baby Beck's debut!

Even though this isn't the official debut of Baby Beck (you'll have to wait another 20 weeks for that), it does mark a special time in the development of the little bean. It is with this that we wanted to share the progress and evolution of the pregnancy thus far.

We'll start with the first ultrasound - a single snapshot at about 8 weeks (December 31, 2008). With this image, you'll surely understand why we thought we may be having something other than a homosapien! (Turtle, dog, dinosaur?)

Though, we were looking at the shot backwards. The head is actually on the left (at that early stage of development, the head is oversized in comparison to the rest of the "body." At that point, it had just started to develop webbed fingers and toes on the ends of the hands and feet, the eyelids nearly covered the eyes, breathing tubes were extending from the throat to the developing lungs and its "tail" was just about gone. (Yes, if you didn't know it, they have tails early on!) What appears to be a puffy tail in this picture is a portion of the umbilical cord.

It's amazing what just four weeks can mean for a developing little being. That brings us to our 12-week ultrasound (January 28, 2009). You'll see that the turtle has exited and a new swan has emerged! We came away with a couple nice profile shots - one of the little noggin (the black spot is the brain - YAY! We'll need one of those! - the white areas are the nose bone, the soft palate and the chin bone):

...and one that includes the torso and leg mid-kick:

You can try to make guesses or wagers on the sex, but at 12-weeks, it's kind of a lost cause. As we were told, they can't tell that early via ultrasound. Now, if we would have had a "4-D ultrasound," it may have been a different story.

That brings us to this last Friday (March 27, 2009) - our 20-week peek at the rapidly changing bean. (This was the appointment at which we had the opportunity to find out the sex of Baby Beck... but as I mentioned earlier, we opted out of that chance.) We think we neded up with some pretty good shots, but we'll let you be the judge!

The first is something that may symbolize "making an entrance" - the foot:

Next comes a look at the profile with head and torso. The little "bubbles" at the end of the leg are the side of the foot. In this one, you can see that the shape of the head has changed just a bit - it's rounded out a bit from the 12-week shot.

This one is a close-up of the head - but what's funny is it looks like the baby is mimicking Mike Myers' pose as Dr. Evil as he said "one million dollars." See the resemblance?

That brings us to the final shot we received - a look at the face of the baby. Now don't get too excited... it may more closely resembles a skeleton than the innocent eyes, pinchable cheeks and pursed lips typical of a baby's mug. The yellow arrow points to the baby's fingertips resting on its forehead (not sure why that would be comfortable, but who am I to judge?!). The blue arrows indicate the eyes, the purple is the chin and perhaps you can fill in the other spaces.

It's not likely we'll have any other "snapshots" of the bump until August, but if we do, I'll be sure to share them!