Our beautiful baby scans...

Here we go then, just a few pics from the recent scans, first up our baby at 6 weeks and 4 days measuring 6.6mm in length and we see a tiny heart beating (and that's about it)-

At 9 weeks and 1 day, our baby has grown to 21.6mm...still very tiny, but having almost tripled it's length in just 3 weeks.

Then at 12 weeks...we finally see the familiar shape of a baby on the brand new flat screen TVs in the scan room ...With a wonderful sonographer taking lots of time to describe everything and confirm the baby is all OK. At this stage, the baby is 58mm (Crown to rump) and my dates are moved a little forward (meaning we are due a January baby)!

Then here we are today...officially half way through the pregnancy and Fink can again have a insight into the pregnancy and witness some of the kicking that is happening all the time. This little one is very, very active making it hard for the sonographer to get all the measurements. She has to wobble my tummy lots, poke, prod and get the little one to roll over to get everything she needed. Technology has improved so much so Thomas was scanned, we got to see the eye sockets, lenses, face, lips, chambers of the heart, arteries, liver, kidneys...just amazing!

A hand and a leg (responsible for all the kicking)...


An arm....

...and the big question...did we find out the gender? No...we've been through so much and really don't mind as long as it's a healthy baby (and a nice surprise)...However, I couldn't help asking the sonographer if we did want to know would she be able to tell us...her response..."Oh yes, I know what you are having" but even then we didn't cave in and ask. Now, I'm analysing every part of our conversation and trying to see if she gave us any clues...but we'll have to wait till January to find out for sure!

At the end of the scan, we came out so very happy at how amazing this whole experience is... we are going to be a mummy and a daddy again and it's so incredible to be responsible for this little life. We celebrated by going to "Next" and buying our first piece of baby clothing...just so they have something new to wear when they are born! A very, very exciting, happy day!

My Dad's Bigger Than Your Dad!

Hehe...thanks Absolute Beginner for Thomas' new T-Shirt, all the little rascals at Baby Cafe will think twice before challenging him for a tempting toy when he's wearing that! ;)

Baby Thomas is 9 months old!

Hrm...*very* nearly not Baby Thomas any more...so what's changed since Flyingpops' last post on his development?

At last weigh in (yesterday) he was 10.05kg (or very slightly above the "average" line, noting a gentle upward trend), he is also now in the 98th percentile for age/height ratio (i.e only 2% of other babies of his age in the UK are longer/taller) annoyingly meaning he has *already* grown out of many of his lovely 9-12 month clothes (almost three months early)...

He has three-and-a-half teeth, two on the bottom and one-and-a-half on the top, all of which are middle incisors (perfect for cutting up carrot/apple sticks, biting Mummy's chin and scratching Dad's DVDs)...

He has demonstrably assigned the noise "Adada" to me and "Emamam" to Flyingpops and will use the former when he expects to be lifted out of bed or lifted up generally when he spots me (complete with smiling and holding up his arms when I prompt "Come on then sunshine, hup") and the latter when he is wanting Mummy milk (usually in that order)...and "Bobobob" *might* be Popple (one of his bedroom toys) but the jury is still out on that one...unfortunately "ARGH!" (*bash*) still means "May I have some more food please, Daddy" (but we'll get there)... ;)

Food-wise he continues to be an absolute dream, he'll eat *anything* apart from sour out-of-season tomatoes (which get a *very* firm raspberry), but we'll see if that changes when the good, sweet British ones come along...he uses his teeth to properly chew and can cope with pretty much anything he is handed (although a lot does still end up on the floor, it's mostly due to extreme wide-eyed enthusiasm - "Thomas, do you really need to be holding five toast soldiers at once?" - sort of thing)...

He can now shift fairly comfortably between sitting and crawling positions (and vice-versa) and shuffle slowly around the room (usually backwards - but hey, it works!), can hold himself upright (on two feet) for 5 minutes at a time as long as there is something like a sofa to cling on to, but still needs rescuing fairly often when he gets a leg trapped or topples over a cushion...oh and once, he managed to get from crawling to sitting to standing up all by himself, prompting us to lower his cot mattress to the bottom setting (for fear of finding him on the nursery floor after a successful repeat performance)...

At Baby Swimming he now automatically turns to lower himself into the water safely, which is actually quite annoying as we are now supposed to be learning what to do if you accidentally fall in, and he sort of won't...well, unless physically thrown, but that is quite an unlikely scenario in real life, frankly... ;)

Most impressive for me, however, is his sudden (almost exponential) acceleration with careful motor control and attention to detail...over this last weekend the bashing has largely stopped, he can now - with one finger - pick out individual buttons, not only the big colourful, musical ones on his electronic toys, but after studying Daddy playing Xbox he can choose and push the tiny individual controller buttons, carefully choose directions on the D-Pad, and operate tiny cogs and levers on his mechanical toys...he also, again with a single finger, explores the books we read together for their various textures (all the while making his "curious" noise which sounds a bit like "Shh...Shh") and staring intently...

Absolutely incredible...

Baby Gap Canary Wharf - Window Dressing

Only shop dummies, I know, but something about the way they had just been piled up in the window of Baby Gap in Canary Wharf made me do a little involuntary shiver! <:0

Especially that shoe just thrown on top...

Newborn clothes - Shopping in Crawley

Back to Saturday now, we got up really early so we could be there before the ravening new-town horde descended (baying and slavering) scouring every corner of every retail outlet with their particular brand of covetous chaos...arriving just about 9am, we found the car park largely empty (plan going well so far), parked up on the second storey and rode the escalators down into County Mall, first stop was Boots (which we had practically to ourselves), and by some great fluke of luck they had a massive promotion on (loads of extra points and up to 40% off baby goods), so we picked up some new expensive electrical goods, *enormous* pots of hideously expensive creams and lotions and a few items of clothing (earning about £17 in points on the reward card)-

- we then hit Pumpkin Patch (where we got 3 lemon-yellow little outfits, with an incredibly cute little hat and matching vest, mittens and booties) - these will be the "visiting time" baby wear, for when the little one has to be all presentable for picture taking -

- after this we headed to Primark (me dragging my heels in anticipation of absolute hell), but it too was actually comparatively empty! In there we picked up the majority of the simple, everyday outfits required for the early days, and after a brief stop at Prémaman (another sale) to pick up a bargain cardigan, we finished off in Mothercare (who were *also* having a sale! Talk about the right weekend to go shopping for baby stuff!) but all that meant was they had wheeled all the rails out of the stock room and jumbled everything up (meaning it ended up being a much more confusing shopping experience even than Primark, as newborn was all mixed up with everything else)...not ideal...but anyway, we now have *plenty* of vests, socks, baby grows, etc. etc. and from that direction, at least, we are all ready to go! :)