21 weeks

Everything is OK! We went for the anomaly scan today at the John Radcliffe. As it turned out we needn't have bothered turning up early to make sure we missed the traffic - they had staff shortages due to sickness and so our 9.45am appointment ended up happening at 11.45am instead. Of course you also have to have a full bladder for the scan to 'cushion' the baby, so I was drinking cups of water from the fountain for 2 hours beforehand meaning I was desperate for a wee by the time we got in.

But the wait was totally worth it in the end - all the measurements were fine, all the organs normal and the wee one was very active, especially when it came to the time to capture a few shots for the scan photos. Most of them show our little darling standing on its head or with its arms and legs all over the place - but they're all brilliant. I've still no idea whether it's a boy or girl, and the nice sonographer, when I asked her at the end if she could tell herself (we had said we didn't want to know but I wanted to know if there was something obvious we'd missed...) said she didn't even check either, so we're none the wiser, which is just how we like it. We bought paint samples in various shades of green at the weekend to paint our deep blue spare room a less 'boyish' colour just in case, though I'm sure a baby girl wouldn't give two hoots about the colour of the nursery walls until she got to about four years old anyway.

Added to all this excitement is the fact that I can definitely feel loads of movement now, even from the outside of my belly rather than just the internal flutterings of the last few weeks. Ali hasn't managed to catch a kick yet but it's only a matter of time I'm sure.

So now we know everything's fine and developing as it should, it's time to put all my previous baby posts live, so apologies to those of you on Bloglines who suddenly have 8 or 9 posts to wade through of my self-indulgent baby-waffling. And to those who have been through it all before, feel free to send helpful anecdotes or recommendations...