It's a BOY!!!

Let me introduce to you Nathan Frederick! Yes, after the past several weeks convinced IT was a she and being satisfied with our girl name we had to finally come to heads with what name we wanted to stick with. Chris and I had previously liked the name William Frederick and recently I came up with the name Nathan Alexander which I really liked. We decided to do a combination of the two deciding on the final name Nathan Frederick. As many of you know Chris' father's name is Fred or Frederick. Chris wanted his father's name to be incorporated somehow and I liked Nathan and it's possible nicknames aka Nate better than William and it's possible nicknames aka Willy, Bill, Billy, and Will. I actually really like the name Will but may have lost it on anyone who ever tried calling my son Willy or Bill.

So now I can finally finish my baby registry and work on ideas for the nursery. I had my heart set on some sort of a beach theme whether it was a boy or a girl. I just wanted to take the beach theme different avenues. I need to begin actively looking at ideas and what's out there.

I am so excited! I am especially excited for Chris! I think that our son will be like a mini-me of Chris and to be honest I think Chris will love all of the daddy attention :) Chris will have someone to teach to play ball, watch sporting events, go fishing, tease, pick on, and all of those other Daddy/Son things. I just can't wait to see their bond develop and grow. It will be such a special relationship. I am personally excited about having my first born be a male who will love and protect me with all of his heart. And knowing that he'll be Chris' son he'll make sure to look out for all of my other future children, his siblings.

Nathan is very healthy. We have completed additional testing just to give Chris and I more insight and information about our baby. All of the testing came back very positive. They can't give you a YES or NO whether your baby has specific disorders but they give you a percentage. The fraction given to someone in my age category is 1/1,000 for both Down Syndrome and other forms of mental retardation. After my testing Nathan's fraction went down to 1/10,000 chance of having Down's or another form of mental retardation. That is the lowest percentage you can get or the furthest away from Yes than we could have asked for. We are very thankful that the tests came back positive.

There was one slight complication on my end. It does not affect the baby at all but could cause some unexpected changes in our ideal delivery situation. My placenta is slightly covering the opening of my cervix (where the baby comes out). As everything grows over the course of the next couple of months there is a chance that the placenta will shift and move away from my cervix. The problem is that if it does not move and I go into labor the placenta would block the baby from exiting my body. They can not deliver the placenta first because the baby would lose it's nutrients. What this means for me is that if it does not move that I will have to deliver through C-section rather than vaginally. Of course I'd like to deliver vaginally but if it's the best for both the baby and I than of course that's what we will do. Typically, yesterday would have been my last ultrasound but due to this possible complication I will have another ultrasound between 28-30 weeks. At that time they will be able to see if the placenta has moved enough to allow for a natural delivery or if we need to take other precautions.

Here's the baby looking right at you. It's kind of a freaky picture. He's laying at a slight diagonal with his head to the upper left. Those two black spots are his eye sockets. You can also see his arm to the right of his body.

Here's the baby on his back. You are looking at him from the side. His head is on the left of the screen and those are his little feet above his stomach. He's in the reclined, feet up position :) I must be providing a nice little home in there!
Okay so I have a difficult time seeing this picture but I'll do my best at explaining it. This is where the ultrasound technician was able to distinguish between a boy or a girl. If you look at the arrow in the middle of the screen it's pointing towards Nathan's.... what do all of the mother's out there call it.....privates? His legs are coming up the the upper left diagonal of your screen. I think he must have been in motion because it's a little sloppy and blurry to me. But you get the point, right?
Here's his heartbeat. I know it's much more exciting to hear than see but his heart rate is 145bpm. This is in the normal range for a baby Nathan's age.

All of his other organs were checked and look good! Everything is pumping blood and functioning as expected. So thankful!!!