Name: Noble, beautiful, unmerited favor

Friday at 3pm was my scheduled appointment. My mom, Alex, Alex's mom, and myself were all in the waiting room.They did not start on time, but this is typical for afternoon appointments.

The nurse called us back and I felt like time had slowed down. I'd been counting down the minutes to this appointment ever since I had scheduled it two weeks ago.

The ultrasound person started off by checking everything medical-she said something about the brain, heart, kidneys, checking for a cleft pallet, fingers and toes, the spine, where the placenta was (and was not), and did some measuring. She didn't see anything to worry about! The baby weighs 12 oz and her heart rate was 155. The doctor will review the ultrasound with me at my next appointment two weeks from now.

Then she asked if we wanted to know the gender. Of course we said yes! She first said that the legs were very close together, but then typed on the screen "It's a girl!" She put an arrow up on the screen, and pointed out the "girl parts" so that we could see how she could tell. A few more ultrasound pictures, and then we had to stop because our beautiful girl flipped and decided she didn't want to be observed anymore.

We have a dvd of the ultrasound, but all of our pictures are actual print outs. I tried to take pictures of the ultrasound pictures with no real success. Feel free to come visit me and see the pictures in person.

Her name: Adara Grace Barberi. Adara in Hebrew means noble, and in Greek it means beauty (according to our baby book and some online sites). Grace (at least the shortened meaning) means unmerited favor. I love it. It's such a picture of our life: Beautiful, noble, unmerited favor. We don't deserve all the wonderful things God has given us. We don't deserve this beautiful baby girl growing inside of me, but God has given us abundant blessings. We can never glorify Him enough.

21 weeks down, 19 more to go!