BABY! haha, sorry. Anyway, before we get to that exciting little tidbit, let's chat about things, shall we?

At 20 weeks, Matt finally called Pakarii, the midwife house I'd found online, for me. You know, in case they didn't have anyone who spoke English :)  Good news, they have a doula from Australia who speaks English and the doctora who started Pakarii (who is from Germany) also speaks English.  We made an appointment for the next week and were told Dra. Angela likes everyone to attend a general info session that they hold on Thursday nights at 7pm.

So, Thursday, we made arrangements for our friends from the ward to watch Henlie so we could go to the information session.  Matt did okay at translating for about half of the time lol.  Peruvians talk a lot.  Oh, and while it naturally didn't start on time, it was only like 7:30pm before it got going.  Dra. Angela talked about the history of Pakarii and about standards of OBs in Peru (like, you're 30 or older? Automatic C-section!).  We all had to introduce ourselves.  I made Matt translate for me :)  We got a tour of the house by one of the other doulas, Luna.  At this point, I lost my translator :)  It was fine, though, because I recognized just about everything in the birthing room and it's not like I had questions :)  When we got back to the main room, Matt still mostly gave up translating, because he was also tired and mostly stopped listening :)

The next day, Friday Jan. 23rd, we had our appointment with Dra. Angela.  We took Henlie with us this time.  I was very comfortable with her, which was nice.  She took my history and gave me a small check-up.  We also listened to the baby's heartbeat on the Doppler.  She picked up both my and the baby's heartbeats at the same time.  It's always a fun comparison to hear how much faster their little hearts beat :)  We talked about breastfeeding and diet.  I'm sorry, I'm not hippie enough to completely give up sugar :)  But she did tell us about a fun farmer's market type thing they have in a park near there on Saturdays.  We also talked about exercise and how they have a yoga class on Saturdays there.  She also gave us a paper to get lab work done and told us we could either get an ultrasound there (at Suiza Lab) or for a bit more money, there was another doctor that was nicer.  In fact, she said he was the best.  So we concluded our visit, made an appointment for next month, and went on our way.

Since Matt's company has offered to reimburse us for maternity and birthing expenses in lieu of international insurance which wouldn't cover the pregnancy anyway.... we went to ILSAR for the nicer ultrasound with Dr. Huamán on Monday morning.  Can I just tell you - best.ultrasound.experience.EVER! I think we were the first appointment of the day, because we had no wait.  The table and pillow were comfy.  The ultrasound machine was fancy with a nice big screen.  They project everything onto a nice TV facing you so you can see what's going on.  

And let's just talk about this most awesome ultrasound machine, shall we?  It does 2D, 3D, and 4D.  It will show blood flow in red and blue.  It has a built in Doppler.  It is seriously so cool.  While I didn't understand everything Dr. Huamán was saying, I did catch after every measurement and whatnot "normal."  He even threw in a few "perfectos."  Then, after the ultrasound, they give you this nice folder with all of the info (in Peru, patients are responsible for their own medical records), unfortunately for me, it's all in Spanish lol.  Just like back home, they have printouts of some of the stills from the ultrasound.  And, BONUS!, you get the whole ultrasound on a DVD.  So awesome.  And, even though it was more expensive, it only cost S/.350, which is currently about $117.  Not bad for no insurance, I think.

Anyway, after that, we headed to Suiza Lab for my lab work. Unfortunately, Dra. Angela didn't mention that the blood work needed to be done fasting.  So we did the urine sample and had to go back Tuesday morning, because they require at least 10 hours fasting.  Another nice thing about Peru, if you're pregnant and/or have children with you, they expedite you.  Less lines :)  So we got like 3 vials of blood drawn.  Now we just need to pick up the results and send them to Dra. Angela so she has them for our next appointment.

Anyway, Tuesday we also worked on our gender reveal, and set up times to call family members to tell them.  I'm guessing I'll have some screen shots or something to share from our video calls, so maybe I'll just make you suffer and wait another post to see what we're having.  Hmm, it's kind of fun torturing everybody :)