The Great Gender Reveal

For weeks (make that months) I have been anxiously awaiting my 20 week anatomy scan so that I could finally know our baby’s gender.  I am not a patient person and waiting all these months has been killing me.  I don’t know why it was so important to me to know the gender.  I know that lots of women…even fellow Type-A women…wait the whole pregnancy to find out and love their choice to wait.  I couldn’t do it.

As with every other ultrasound we’ve had, the baby was extremely uncooperative during yesterday’s scan.  I had been in the hospital again over the weekend (suspected preterm labor that “luckily” ended up being just tearing of abdominal adhesions that I have from all of my endometriosis surgeries) and so I knew that the baby was okay, as they had a fetal heart monitor on me during my entire stay.  What the baby would let them see during yesterday’s scan looked great.  The baby is a little small, but that is typical for a mother with diabetes in the second trimester.  Plus, I still haven’t gained any weight.  I’ll gain a pound or two and then have a bad day and take it back off.  Once I can start putting on some of the pounds I lost, the baby should get a little bigger.

The scan lasted over an hour and the baby wouldn’t allow the technician to see the head or face (no cute pictures…our baby is definitely camera shy…always with the hands and arms in front of the face), so I have to go back in 2 weeks to have the scan finished.  The technician kept saying “Come on Little One, your Mommy and Daddy want to know which color they are painting your nursery.”  But the baby wasn’t listening.

The technician was making her apologies because she didn’t think she was going to be able to tell us the gender when, as if the baby knew what we had wanted and had just been toying with us the whole time, the baby flipped over and displayed the goods to the ultrasound in spread-eagle style.  Apparently our baby BOY is not as modest as he first seemed.  My mother’s intuition was correct (although The Prince is quick to point out that I did have a 50/50 chance of being right no matter what).  We are having a BOY!

I had worried that I would be disappointed if they told me I was having a boy.  I love pink and bows and frills, and I would be lying if I said I haven’t day dreamed about having a girl that miraculously would look like me…or at least the best parts of me.  But my worrying was for nothing.  When the technician said we were having a boy, a flood of relief washed over me and I started crying.  I was so happy and felt this immediate bond with the baby, beyond anything I had already been experiencing.  There was no hint of disappointment…I love that I am having a boy. 

For me, knowing the gender made this all more real.  My baby has an identity now, beyond “the baby” or “Baby Hamish,” and I am thrilled.  Speaking of “Baby Hamish,” the only bad thing about the baby being a boy is that The Prince is now dropping the name “Hamish” in just about every sentence that comes out of his mouth.  In an attempt to diffuse that situation quickly, I made The Prince go through name possibilities with me last night.  We’re pretty confident we have the short list all set (it helped that I had been cheating and working on a “girl list” and “boy list” for a couple of months)…and Hamish is not on that short list (although I relented and am allowing The Prince to continue calling the baby “Hamish” during the pregnancy).  We are keeping the names we have chosen a secret, as there is nothing worse than having people shoot down your favorite names with negative associations they have with the names.  People can judge our choice when there is a cute little baby boy attached to that name…let them try to scrunch up their noses at our choice at that point.

I think things get fun now.  I can now plan the nursery theme, start buying baby boy clothes and maybe even get going on my baby registry/shower (something which I’ve let fall by the wayside the last couple of months).  Just typing this, I’m seeing blue.