Boy or Girl?

September 25, 2009
Ultrasound day! I was excited and a little nervous all day long. The appointment wasn't until late afternoon, so I had a million thoughts going through my head. Will everything be ok? Will we be able to tell if it is a boy or girl? Should I find out? Should I keep it a secret? What if there are more than one? Maybe the doctor will find a second baby hiding in there!

Anyway, I met Husband at the other hospital facility (remember that my current one does not have an ultrasound machine, so they send me to the next town over). It is a brand new facility, so it was really nice inside and out. It had clean floors, a calming atmosphere, and no people. I wasn't sure where to go, so we found a map and wandered around until we found the women's health section. There the nurse told me to go back downstairs to radiology. Apparently that is where they do the ultrasounds. I checked in and they sent me across the hall to the waiting room.

Husband and I sat waiting- he played on his iphone and I hung out. A girl about my age came out and met a friend. We saw her sobbing and heard her complain, "She was so mean! She wouldn't even talk to me." I wasn't sure what she meant, but it did make me a little nervous.

The doctor called me in next, and I lay down on the hospital recliner thing. I don't want to say bed, because it's not a bed, but it's a thing you have to lay down on, so I'll call it a recliner. The doctor then spread the goo on my tummy and told us not to ask questions because she had to do her job. Wait, what? Don't ask questions? We are about to see our child on a screen in front of us, how can we refrain from asking questions? No wonder the girl before me came out crying. I would have, too, if Husband had not been there. How rude! Well, we controlled ourselves. The doctor also asked if I had anything to drink about an hour before. Nope, not really. Nobody told me anything about how to prepare for this thing. I was just sent a card in the mail that said show up at this date and time. I'm not sure why I would have had to have a full bladder. She was still able to see the baby. Something to do with taking measurements of something or other. A fact to google, I suppose, although I don't really care. Last time I went in with a full bladder it was really painful. I don't want to do that again.

Doctor lady had a list of items she had to find with the wand thingy, and take pictures of them. I tried to watch the screen the whole time, and could vaguely figure out what things were. It helped that she labeled some of them, and I was trying to interpret the codes she used. It was pretty cool to see the baby on the screen in black and white. It was much bigger than before! At one point, she was trying to capture something, and I thought to myself, are those the balls? Is it a boy? Turns out it was a nose. Oops. I don't think I'm very good at reading those.

We were able to see quite a lot of detail. We saw bone development, legs, arms, and the baby's lips and nose (She explained that she had to check for a cleft lip. We are in the clear!). She also measured the hearbeat and we got to see the soundwaves come up on the screen. It measured about 132 beats per minute, which was less than the 150 we heard at the last appointment. I had a smile on my face the whole time she was moving the wand around on my tummy. That living thing is inside of me! Amazing!

Towards the end she asked if we wanted to know if it was a boy or a girl. I think we decided at that moment to find out if we could. I asked her if she could tell, and she said that yes, it was very obvious. Then she showed us. Just like you hold up a baby's legs to change it's diaper, that was the position my baby was in, showing off its parts. Any guesses yet? As a matter of fact, it's a girl! She explained what the girl parts were and told us that it was a very definite thing. We're going to have a daughter!

Based on the computer measurements, the baby weighed about 11 oz. She said everything else seemed healthy, and the only thing to note was that the baby is breech (head is near my belly button when it is supposed to be upside down). She then printed out a bunch of pictures for us to take home. We got a cool picture of the baby resting her arm on her leg, two of her sucking her thumb, a really cool foot picture where you can see the bottom of her foot, another one of her arm, and one of her looking at us. The doctor pointed out that you can see the lens of her eye in that, which is what is developing now, so it was a good thing.

After the appointment Husband and I decided whether or not we wanted to tell people. We made the decision that we would, but we wanted to be together when we told everyone. We got home and called his family. We started off by making them take a guess as to the gender of the baby. Most people guessed boy. They were very excited, though, when we told them we are having a girl.

Husband went online and ordered our first pink onesie, he was so excited. I thought it was cute! The next step was to decide how to spell the name. We had agreed on names a while ago. That was one of our major decisions we had to make before we could even become pregnant. Names are a big deal to both to us, so we had a lot of negotiating and discussion before we finally agreed on a boy and a girl name. Then we got pregnant.