you know i feel it in my heartbeat

Soooooo our big news this week is that we got to hear the baby's heartbeat!! Our midwife used a fetal doppler to locate the very strong heartbeat... which was really just a loud swishing sound that I think made Mike want to stab something sharp into his ear canals. I could tell by the look on his face when we first heard it that he was thinking, "Ummmm, make that awful noise stop and find the heart already..." Upon learning that this was, in fact, our child's rapidly beating heart we both found the sound much less annoying.

The baby is apparently sitting "right up front" (whatever that means), and was periodically moving around in what sounded like very elaborate acrobatics. I figure he or she should enjoy the mobility and flexibility now, because there is no genetic possibility that Mike and I could pull off producing a child petite enough to be a gymnast.

For those of you who have not heard the old wive's tale about fetal heart rate (or, as I like to call it, the "Tylea-tale," since she's the one who introduced it to us), there is a widely held belief that the number of heartbeats per minute can be a predictor of the sex of the baby. A low heart rate (fewer than 150 bpm) generally signals a boy, while a higher heart rate (above 150 bpm) indicates a girl. There is apparently NO scientific proof that this is true, much to my mother's chagrin. However, for the fun of prediction (and because, really, what do scientists know, anyway??), I thought I'd share that our little one's heart rate ranged from 147 to 172 bpm, staying pretty consistently above 160. Hmmmm.... now may be the time to start placing bets about whether we're going to have a little moo or a little hoo. We should know for sure in about 2 months, when I'll have my first ultrasound.

In the meantime, I may cave and buy one of those highly inaccurate over-the-counter gender predictor tests.... we'll keep you posted!