A healthy baby on the way!

Yesterday was Esther's 18 week ultrasound. It was a stressful time for me (Marc), since it was this ultrasound that told us that Lucas had brain abnormalities - and it was going to be with the same ultrasound doctor who suggested that we abort Lucas.

Our ultrasound technician (Beth) was great. She quickly focused in on the brain and within a few minutes told us that everything looked perfect! A wave of relief washed over me, and everything from then on was a bit of a blur. We told her upfront that we didn't want to know what the sex was (what does it matter anyway? They told us Lucas was going to be a girl!). We got to see baby peanut moving around a bunch, and got to see a bit of the baby in 3D - although it's a bit early to actually make out any real facial features in the 3D pics.

The doctor came in after the technician left. He also confirmed that everything looks perfect with baby peanut, but mostly seemed interested in knowing more about Lucas (from a clinical diagnosis standpoint). We told him about the joy he has brought to our lives and about how great he is doing. He urged us to make a follow up ultrasound appointment just to make sure that baby peanut is still OK in 6 weeks. We agreed so that we could get out of there quicker, but we didn't like the idea of going back to that office. Esther's OB agreed with us that this appointment seems unnecessary, and asked us to give him a call in a week so that he can have a chance to look over the scans. As long as everything looks fine to him, we'll cancel the follow up ultrasound.

We're grateful to God for the wonderful news, and we're so excited to meet the little one. We really need to start thinking about some names...

Ultrasound 1/20/10

Happy New Year!

Well, we just got back from another Christmas in New York City. It was great spending time with people we love and eating lots of great food along the way. We all had a busy week, and none of us even came close to staying awake until midnight last night.

Now that we're back home, there's a lot that we need to start doing to get ready for the new baby. We'd really love to move into a bigger house, but there are a few minor things I need to get done before we put the house on the market. Assuming that we will even be able to sell our house in a reasonable time frame, there's the big question of where we should move. We want to find the best place for Lucas, but there isn't a lot of information out there on the internet about special education programs. We'll need to start making phone calls and setting up some face to face meetings so that we can figure out where to start looking for a new home. The current idea is to make a move before the home buyers tax credit expires in May, but we'll see what God has planned for us.

We didn't take as many pictures as usual on this trip, but I think we got some good ones:

Christmas 2009