Little Baby Courtright

For those of you that don't know, my doctor sent us for an ultrasound today after our recent bloodwork indicated that we have an elevated risk for Downs Syndrome. Although the risk isn't significant, it was worth checking out. I'm at the 18-week mark, so it was still a bit early to see a lot of detail on all the organs, but overall the ultrasound looked really good. They did, however, discover that the baby has a 2-vessel umbilical cord (most babies have 3 vessels instead of 2) so they will be closely monitoring the baby's development from now on. Unfortunately there are a lot of scary things on the Internet about this condition, so I am vowing to stay away from Internet research and just rely on God and our doctors that everything will work out fine.

The exciting news from the ultrasound is that we now know what sex we are having. If you haven't heard by now, the male-dominant Courtright clan is about to get an injection of estrogen. That's right -- we're expecting a girl!! Jeff and I were both SHOCKED in a wonderful way. We have no idea where to begin...girl names, girl clothes, and girl emotions! Yikes! :-) Below I've attached our ultrasound pics and I'll describe them for you because they are a bit hard to see at first.

That's our update for now and I'll do my best to keep you updated. We certainly appreciate your thoughts and prayers, and we have faith that everything is going to turn out just fine with our precious baby girl.

This first picture is a 3-dimensional picture of our baby girl's face. Her little hand is curled up by her cheek on the right side of the picture.

It's almost impossible to tell in this picture, but it proves that she's a girl! These are her leg bones with her little girl parts in the middle marked by the tiny X.

This next picture is a profile shot of the baby's face (towards the left side of the picture) and that's either her arm or leg in there (at the top), I can't tell which.

The picture below is, again, almost impossible to see, but this is her nose and lips. (I'll take their word for it!)

The next picture below is a 2-dimensional shot of her face...looks a little smooshed at this angle!

Finally, the below picture is another profile of her face. Right next to her face is her little hand, almost like she's about to suck her thumb but instead making a number 1 sign. (Texas Tech fans will like this shot because that's their hand signal!)