It's a Girl!

Wow, the last few days have been a whirlwind! Tuesday started off with the marker of 19 weeks pregnant. Ryan and I both had work, and were getting off a little early to head to the big US, which was scheduled for 4:30. First of all I had to have a full bladder (Drink 32 oz of clear liquid 1 hour prior to the apt) which is really hard to tell a pregnant woman to do! We got to Kaiser and found the ultrasound department down in the basement. The rad tech was really nice, and started the US taking all these measurements and pictures of the baby, labeling different things. After like 15 min I am thinking "ok, how long is this going to go on???" I guess there are for more things they are looking for to make sure the baby is developing properly than just "penis or vagina?" Fine with me, but I really have to go pee, and sliding this stick around my stomach with moderate pressure doesn't help things! She did let me go pee after about 20 min (I guess the full bladder not only holds the intestines out of the way but also sort of holds the baby in place, less room for her to wiggle around while they are trying to get certain shots and measurements.) I felt sooo much better after that. The tech was pointing out all these things like the bladder that looked to me more like bad film footage circa the 1960's of a smoke stack than a baby or baby parts of my future child.

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So we finally get to the place where they show the bottom side of the baby. (Like you are sitting the baby down on a copy machine), and she is saying, "there are the legs, there is the butt, there is this, that, blah blah blah" all the time my heart is ready to bust through my chest and I am sure that I am going to have a heart attack and I am about to yell "come on lady, what the hell is it???" and she says, "well it looks like a girl to me!" and explains that if it were a boy, there would be some kind of lump between the legs signifying a penis or testes, but the absence of that in combination with the white lines around the crotch area looked like labia to her, so she was about 85% sure it was a girl. Of course there is a possibility that there are boy parts there we are missing. (When I showed the US pictures to Cheryl and told her this, she said, "Oh yeah, its a girl. If it was any son of Ryan's you would be able to tell, trust me!!!" And I can attest to that... ;0) However, it is possible "he" takes after my dad, and then... well we will just say all bets are off.)

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*Some Details*

-Heartrate: 147bpm

-12 oz (big girl! I am glad she is gaining her weight, bc I am still on the low end of weight gain)

-~15 cm, or ~6 in

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Anyway, we are walking out of the hospital, and I ask Ryan if he is surprised at all... because the whole time I thought it was a girl, and everyone else had their opinions, but he really wasn't willing to guess. He stopped, looked at me like I was crazy, and said very seriously, "Really? You are really asking me that? With your hostile uterus? Come on, Loralyn. Your uterus had a checkpoint set up with big pushy bouncer-women who only let female sperm into the party inside with proper forms of id. All male sperm were turned away at the door. And you think there was any chance it was going to be a boy?"

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In all honesty though, I think that a girl will be best for us. I have a special bond with my Mom because of the way I was raised (for any of you who don't know I was a love child, and my Mom wanted a child so "arranged" it with my Dad and raised me on her own, just the two of us until I was 9 and she married my step-dad,) so having a daughter would mean something different to me in a nostalgic way. And for Ryan, who is a very a-typical man (no, I did not say a-sexual) who is not into baseball, football, loud music and big trucks in the way most manly-men are, I think a girl to start with will be better... there will not be the "pressures" to teach and foster the first Daddy and son "let's play catch" moments, etc. He can get practice with a girl for the basics of kids and children (feeding, dressing, bathing, friends, school, etc.), then if our next is a boy he can figure out all the boy stuff instead of having to deal with those basics at the same time.

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Ok, so the next step (since Nicole and Jason already bought theirs which is a sure sign and because next week is halfway through the pregnancy and it's all starting to get pretty real for us,) is to find a suitable sleeping container for her, since I think they might call CPS on us if we use one of our spare rubbermaid bins...