17 days to go (or somewhere around there)

We had our weekly appointment with our regular obstetrician today. Everything is looking fine, but she said she couldn't be sure whether the baby was in a head down position or still breech, so she wanted to do an ultrasound. Dave & I didn't volunteer that last week the nurse practitioner had said that the baby was definitely head down- we wanted to see the baby again! The ultrasound tech confirmed that he is in a great head down position, and is definitely a boy! In the profile picture above, I think the tech said his head is on the right side, his nose & mouth are those bumpy things (it looks like he's puckering his mouth), and one of his punchy little fists is the circle at the top left.

He was being a little shy at first but she wanted to confirm that it's a boy, so she shook a pill bottle close to my stomach to get him to move, and he could definitely hear it! We could watch him move in response, which was very cool. Dave reads him stories and talks to him and this was just visual confirmation that the baby can hear him. I have also noticed that several times when I'm playing guitar over the last few weeks, the baby has decided it's great fun to kick the back of my guitar! He has been very active this afternoon, moving and kicking, and has another case of the hiccups, which he gets a few times a day.

This weekend we are doing some last-minute preparation for the baby's arrival. We have decided to move our small bookcase into the nursery so we can have a place to put the baby monitor and store his growing collection of children's books. I have found some wonderful ones during my work with kids, so I'm excited to read them to the baby when he is born.