He's definitely a boy!

So on Tuesday afternoon my audience and I traipsed down to our local UC Baby for a 3d/4d ultrasound. Being an engineer, at first I was a bit curious about this fourth dimension. I seem to recall something from physics or linear algebra about the 4-dimensional Euclidean space, but this seemed too complicated for my little baby.

Turns out, the fourth dimension they refer to is that of time - adding the time to the ultrasound, or the ability to show movement over time, is why they call it a 4d ultrasound. The session actually was a combination of 2d, 3d and 4d - they used regular 2d ultrasound to locate the baby, check heart rate and figure out orientation, and then used the 3d and 4d to show us images and video of what he actually looks like in there.

Now I have to admit, I used to think these 3d images were kind of strange looking when I saw them on the internet. But when it's your own baby, they seem just as great as a real photograph because these are by the far the best images we'll ever see of him before he arrives. Granted, some features aren't as distinguishable as others (like the eyes for some reason) and they're somewhat blurred in some areas depending on how he was situated and how close he had moved to the probe etc. But still, they're a pretty good view of the little guy!

So without further ado, here he is (he's got his right arm up beside his head):

It was really cool because the whole time he was moving around and yawning. We could see his mouth open up and close, but it was tough to get a good still image of it - you can kind of see his mouth is open in this one...

We could also see him move his legs, cover his face with his eyes and squirm around in there. It was truly amazing to get a glimpse of him and see what he's up to. We couldn't help but tear up when they first showed him on the screen. We were able to bring up to 7 people with us and my 'audience' got a real kick out of seeing their future grandson and nephew.

We know he's definitely a boy - they showed us a very clear view of his 'gender'. Since this a g-rated blog however, I won't expose my poor little guy's bits for the world to see, but this type of ultrasound definitely confirms the gender. It was interesting because she showed us this view in both regular 2d ultrasound and then in 3d and I never would have been able to identify him as a little boy from the 2d ultrasound alone.

The UC Baby staff were surprised by how plump he already is for 25 weeks, so I'm a bit concerned that he might turn out to be a big boy! However, I'm 5'11" and my husband is 6'2" so there's a good chance he'll be a tall one anyways.

This was truly the best birthday gift I could have gotten this year. And, I have a cd with 54 images and a DVD video on it so I can see him anytime I want. Now, I wonder what he'll look like in real life!