Introducing...

Clara's sister!

That's right...it's another girl for the Hermann's! We had our ultrasound this morning and everything looks great with the baby. We were under the impression that they would be able to look at the baby's esophagus to see if he/she might have the same birth defect that Clara did, but it turns out they aren't able to. All they can really do is look to see if there is fluid in the stomach, which they said is the best indication that everything has developed as it should. They were able to see fluid in this baby's stomach, but they were also able to with Clara so that didn't really provide the assurance to us that we were hoping for. They did, however, look pretty closely at the baby's heart. Clara was born with a small VSD (hole in her heart) which puts any additional children that we have at higher risk for heart defects. They saw nothing abnormal about the baby's heart, but they want us to come back in four weeks to look again when the baby is a little bigger. And since we'll be coming back for that they'll go ahead and look at the stomach again to see if that still looks good.

So we are very pleased with the results of the ultrasound and now we're getting excited thinking about having two girls. I'll probably pull out the baby name book this afternoon and start looking for ideas!

Thank you for your continued prayers for our little baby girl who is perfectly formed yet weighs only about 8 ounces right now. God is so good!

(What you see in the ultrasound picture is the front of the baby's face, with a fist below it. The rest is uterus, placenta, etc.)