10 weeks, baby!

So, I guess technically our little baby is now considered a fetus, whereas before, it was only considered a little embryo.  Since we are NOT going to find out the sex of the baby (and yes, I AM OK with lots of yellow and green), we didn't just want to call it "IT."  We also aren't big fans of calling it our "little miracle," "peanut," or anything like that.  Since I love food and since Billy's favorite cuisine is Mexican, we decided to call our little baby Nacho the embryo.  So, we refer to it as Nacho.  Weird, I know.  We were going to call it Cletus the Fetus once it graduated to fetushood, but we've gotten rather attached to Nacho.

Currently, little Nacho is about 1.22 inches long and weighs about .14 ounces.  Even though its teeny tiny, it's little heart is beating as fast as it can.  We went to the midwife for our second prenatal visit and were able to hear our baby's heartbeat for the very first time.  We had tried to listen to the heartbeat when I was about 6 weeks along, but the baby was too small then.  Billy and I both knew that the fetal heartbeat could be detected from 10-12 weeks.  I didn't want to get my hopes up just in case we didn't hear it that day. 

Leissa, our midwife, pulled out the little doppler radar machine and poured a dollop of that blue gel on my lower belly.  She turned the machine on and moved the hand-held device across my uterus.  The sound was like a TV turned on to a bad channel.  Leissa seemed to recognize that all of the sounds were coming from me.  I tried listening really hard but couldn't tell what was what.  Until I heard it.  It sounded like a persistent "whoosh, whoosh, whoosh, whoosh" going at about 160 beats per minute.  It was definitely distinguishable from all of my background noise.  The minute I heard it, I was stunned and the absurdity that there were 2 hearts beating inside of me briefly crossed my mind.  And then, even before I knew it or could prevent it, I started crying. 

Ok, so I cry a lot.  Even more so now.  And not about my feelings or stress or anything like that, but about Sylvan Learning Center commercials, the Biggest Loser, or pictures of malnourished babies and children.  However, I didn't get the customary nose itch and lower lip shake that I normally do when I cry.  It was the most spontaneous, I-don't-know-why-I'm-crying cry. 

Billy's not a crier.  The only things he cries at are familial shows of support on TV (like in American Idol) or movies like "Rudy."  He did not cry when he heard the baby's heartbeat for the first time.  But no worries, I'm going to force him to watch Rudy or a similar movie right before I give birth so we could have him primed and ready for the big event.