Presenting Micah Odden Meyer

We had our routine ultrasound today, and we're very proud to introduce to you for the first time ever our little baby BOY, Micah Odden Meyer (head to the right, facing the top of the picture)!

Just so you don't strain yourself looking, none of the pictures I've posted give away the fact that they are pictures of a boy. Don't worry though-- it was pretty obvious, and Sarina and I knew what we were looking at before the technician formally announced it for us.

It's amazing how different it is, thinking concretely about having a boy compared with thinking abstractly about having a child. All of a sudden, we can consider the baby's personality and desires ... along with the various trouble he might get himself into. Of course, right now he doesn't look capable of much trouble at all! According to our ultrasound technician, at 18 weeks he's about 10 inches long and weighs about 6 ounces.

Our ultrasound technician didn't say much, but did say that everything looked fine. Micah is healthy (legs and arms enough for the little boy he is, among other things) and active. It was so cool to be able to see him move! For most of the procedure, he had his right hand in front of his face (he must have been thinking really hard about something) and would occasionally move it up and down, or turn his head and look at the ultrasound probe. In this picture we've caught him doing just that. As you can tell, Micah has four fingers on his right hand (from another angle you can see his thumb), and his face is to the right (turned toward us a little bit). If you squint just right you can see his nasal bone and two eyes.

Micah also (thankfully) has two legs, and plenty of toes. You can see both bones of his right leg; they are horizontal in the picture, starting with his knee on the right and ending with both feet, crossed, on the left. The little white dots on the left are the bones in his toes(!!!).

I promised 3-d pictures too, and I have one for you. At 18(.3, ha ha) weeks, apparently, babies are still so small and skinny that the 3-d imaging doesn't work out too well, but our technician humored us and I think it turned out just fine.

In this picture, Micah's head is toward the top. He's facing to the right of the image, and you can make out his right eye, his right arm (with his hand in front of his face) and the tiny crease of his mouth! The big blob on the left is the placenta, and to the bottom right you can see one of Micah's legs sticking out from underneath it.

We were given a DVD recording of part of the session, and if I can manage it I'll rip and post a little video of his heart beating. We also caught a little bit of mouth action too-- we have some footage of Micah "sucking" or "swallowing," and you can see (in 2-d) his jaw move. So cute! If I can work out how to export the video so that it's small enough that I can host it online, I'll do so.

It's so exciting to see our little baby boy all formed and moving. We are excited to be able to feel him! Apparently, Sarina should be able to feel him sometime between 20-24 weeks and I will be able to feel him a month after that. Once he starts moving we'll be able to tell something about his personality: will he be an active or mellow little boy?

Even though to the rest of you he probably looks like a generic baby, he is so cute to us! I insist that he has a Meyer nose, but Sarina is not convinced that there's any evidence for that. hehehehe We'll find out for sure around July 11, 2007. (They adjusted our due date by one day.)

As I always say to the belly...Hellooooooo Micah!