Haiku for the working mom-to-be:

Friday afternoon.
Exhausted, hungry. Tough choice:
Nap or dinner first?

Tonight the nap won out followed by a dinner in which the primary menu selection criterion was: how soon will it be ready?

An ultrasound today shows everything is as it should be. Their measurements line up exactly with a baby at 19 weeks and 6 days, which is right where we are--tomorrow marks the halfway point, 20 weeks. The baby was not in a "posing" mood, the technician said, so we didn't get a good full-body picture. John and I agreed that about the only thing that was recognizable were the feet--our first set of footprints! The baby's legs were extended but the upper body was curled up, including a hand/arm covering his/her face (no, we did not find out the gender!) Will always kept his hands by his face, too. The NICU nurses told us it was comforting for him. I think in the case of his brother or sister, it's probably a space issue at this point. Their estimate is that the baby weighs about 12 oz. right now. So tiny, yet Will was not much bigger than that at birth.

I found out today about a preeclampsia study being done at the university, and when I said I would be interested in participating, they paged the doctor who is running the study to come meet with me. There's not a large window of opportunity to get people enrolled because the study requires a special extra ultrasound at 23 weeks to measure bloodflow through the uterine arteries. There is some research that says this can be predictive of oncoming preeclampsia, but not enough to mandate this test for all pregnant women or even all high-risk pregnant women. There's still nothing they can do to prevent it, but one step at a time I guess. I'm willing to do anything I can to add to the pool of knowledge. At some point there MUST be a treatment or cure.