Well, although Joe and I were essentially unaffected by the flood, parts of the Medical Center a mere 4 blocks away were struck terribly.  Any building with basements (who puts basements in Houston, anyway?) suffered greatly.  And, of course, basements are generally where emergency electrical and computer equipment is kept.  Several hospitals and research buildings lost ALL power, which means several faculty members and their students have lost years and years of research and, I'd guess, millions of dollars worth of antibodies, cell lines, and other delicate materials, some irreplaceable.  Quite sad. 

In the Medical School, the basement was completely filled and the first floor had several feet of water.  They say that the water rushed in with such pressure that many of the walls in the basement were knocked down.  There wasn't any time to get down there to evacuate anything.

So our doctor, who is in one of the affected buildings, has temporarily moved to Park Plaza, which is a quite fancy medical center. Rather posh. However, they have no access to records and have just minimal equipment.  But now their patients that were originally supposed to be delivering at Hermann now get to go to Park Plaza. Which isn't such a bad move, although Hermann does have the best NICU around. 

So for the appointment today, they were minimizing usage of the one sonogram, which was also out of film, as I was disappointed to find out.  But when I mentioned that we hoped to find out the sex, they put me in line.  In the meantime the nurse used the Doppler to hear the baby's heartbeat, which we have never done.  It was quite neato, and the nurse commented that it sounded "good and strong."  A nice, healthy 150 bpm.

For Mother's Day, Joe had gotten me a neat little electric stethoscope for listening to babies in utero.  The last time I used it I had thought I had her something faintly, but didn't think it was fast enough to be the baby.  But when I heard the heartbeat on the Doppler, I realized that it was what I had heard with the electric stethoscope.  Pretty neato!

I spoke to the nurse about my sciatica and she said that most likely the baby was just wedged just right in my uterus to put pressure on the sciatic nerve.  As the baby grew, it got worse and worse, and that the sudden abatement of the pain was due to the baby deciding to move off of it.  I looked down at my tummy and said, "Good baby."

In the last month I've gained 4.5 pounds, making a total of about 8 so far.  Not too bad... I'm right on track for the 25 to 30 that I should gain.  I should be gaining approximately a pound a week and with 22 weeks left, that would be just at 30. 

So, we were hoping to find out the sex of the baby today, but he just wasn't cooperating.  He was hidden way down in my pelvis with his legs up toward my belly.  So the angle wasn't very good and his legs were close together, although it was quite interesting; all the bones in the legs and feet were quite evident and obviously nicely calcified and straight.  Despite Dr. Cook's insistent poking and prodding, the baby just didn't want to move into a better position.  He didn't want to give an answer, but he did say that there were "no obvious boy parts."  The baby was quite big... he looked half again as big as last time and could barely fit on the sonogram screen.  He wasn't as active as last time, however, just staying in one position, but was kicking his legs around at the sonogram wand.

Speaking with another, much more pregnant, patient on the way out, she told me that Dr. Cook, while a wonderful doctor, was notorious for being terrible at determining sex via sonogram.  (This goes along with Laura's story of Dr. Cook telling her Ryan was a girl for quite some time.)  However, the specialist who does the Level II sonograms is supposedly remarkable.  So I'm really looking forward to my appointment with her on the 30th.  We should definitely know the sex then.  And everything else as well. According to Marcela, they measure everything from pinky finger to shoe size.