We went to the doctor on Friday for our 20 week check up. This is a very long and mostly boring appointment. You spend about an hour getting an ultrasound, which sounds thrilling but there is really only about 5 minutes of excitement through the whole thing. They spent the first 59 minutes doing measurements on the head, heart, body, etc. Parts of this are stimulating, like when you can see the baby moving around and you can tell what parts are moving. Mostly though, this part is just very uncomfortable, I did not realize that they pushed so hard on your belly. The best part of the measurements was having my mom there, she has never seen an ultrasound of this quality and it was fun to watch her watch the screen.
In the last minute or so they ask if you want to know the sex of the baby. When I told them yes, my baby made sure she was in a position to make this very difficult. At this point I break out in a sweat (at least I have my backup plan, read on to find out what that was). We are throwing a reveal party for what sex the baby is TONIGHT. It would be very embarrassing not to have an answer. They ended up having to come from the butt up (of the baby) to get the picture. The technician then says “Ultrasounds are never 100%, this is by no means a textbook picture. It looks like it’s a girl.” She tries to point out what she is looking at and why it means a girl, but I couldn’t understand it. The reveal was very nonchalant as if she was telling us that it’s snowing in the mountains in the middle of December. Luckily, the reveal at the party was more exciting, but more on that in a minute.
After the ultrasound we get to go talk with the doctor. He lets us know that the technician had written “possibly a girl.” At this point I am not feeling a lot of faith in the fact that we are having a girl, and this is the last ultrasound we get unless there is something wrong with the baby (cross your fingers that we have no more ultrasounds). The doctor then tries to make us feel better by explaining the ultrasound picture again (I still don’t get it). The doctor told us that the technician probably wouldn’t have said it was a girl if she wasn’t really confident. I guess this will just have to do; we may be surprised anyways at the birth even though we decided to find out.
I am attaching the picture, if you can understand the picture, sorry if you think it is graphic. If you don’t understand how this is showing a baby girl, do not feel bad. I had 2 different doctors explain it to me and I still don’t get it.
Here is the face; it looks a little scary straight on.
Here are some profile pics.
Now on to the fun part!!! We had a party to reveal what our baby was going to be. We had a lot of friends and family turn out for the party. The anticipation was palpable as people started to show up and wage their bets on what I was having. We asked everyone to dress in either blue or pink/red depending on what they thought we are going to have. Rob announced that since my belly was steadily getting bigger we were going to use it as a billboard for our announcement. I lifted my shirt and on my belly was written “It’s a GIRL!!” The crowd goes wild. This was a much more exhilarating reveal than the one that we got at the doctor’s office.
Our back up plan, in case we couldn’t find out if the baby was a girl or a boy, was stocking the party with puppies. Our friend has a dog that had 8 puppies about 6 weeks ago. We brought 3 of them down to the party, and they were a hit. They were the best back up plan we could come up with in case our baby girl didn’t cooperate. Luckily, we did not need them, but they were still a lot of fun.
