Gender Reveal

On Friday, I finally had the highly anticipated gender reveal ultrasound. I was 16.3 weeks, and it has felt like a forever long wait to answering the big question! I was also happy the day had finally arrived because I was so over hearing comments like "Oh that's too early" or "They won't be able to tell yet" or "Don't get your hopes up." Sometimes, I feel like people are just too negative, even when I know they don't mean to be - especially when it comes to pregnancy and parenting. 

I got to the appointment just a little early and at that point I was just barely containing my excitement. I'd tried hard to not get my hopes up, and had terribly failed at that task. I had assumptions on what my baby was. I'd literally dreamed about it. I felt sure. So sure that I was trying to consider my response for if I was wrong. 

They took us back and when we got to the ultrasound room, there were two technicians that would be trying to help us discover what our precious Lovebug was.

One of them gently warned, "Now, it is a little early, so we might not be able to tell yet." I laughed and told her I'd been hearing a lot of that. 

When she put the probe to my abdomen it only took her a second to find our Lovebug. I was instantly amazed! I wasn't looking at a tiny little bean anymore with a black fluttering thing they told me was the heart. No, I was looking at an actual tiny little human!

Suddenly, if this twirling little body was a boy or girl wasn't even in my mind. 

The baby was facing us as soon as she found him/her but only for a moment before spinning and moving around so quickly! It seemed crazy to me that my sweet little baby is in there flopping around that much and I can't even feel it yet! Then again, LB is only about 3.5-4 inches long at the moment and weighing a mere 3 ounces.

At first the baby was being very uncooperative and was moving too quickly for the tech to get a good look at the goods ;)

When a certain image flashed across the screen the onlooking technician said, "Well, it doesn't get any clearer than that."

The other said, "I know. Let's back that up." 

She backed up the footage to an image and froze it there and asked us, "Do you know what you're looking at?"

Neither of us did. Cory joked, "A black and white blur."

Then she asked us what we'd thought the baby was going to be. I told her I thought we were having a boy and Cory thought we were having a girl.

She asked if we wanted to make any last minute bets.

Then she pointed out a leg, the beginning of the abdomen, and then pointed to something else and said… "Mom's right, you're having a boy."

I squealed a little and even teared up - yes, I've become one of those moms.

She turned the screen back to live mode and was able to get a few other good shots of… baby boy parts ;)

I asked her how sure she was and she froze on a different image and zoomed in on it and said, "I'm quite sure. You can clearly see the scrotum and penis in this shot." (That might be tmi for you guys, but hey, they're really sure at least ;)

We're having a son.

Wow. I'm having a son. My sweet, precious, baby boy! EEEKKK! I'm so excited! I started telling Cory well over a year ago that we were going to have a boy. I'd had dreams about him - and though a lot of people don't put stock in that, I did. I also started telling Cory at some point in 2011 that our baby would be due in March 2013, he didn't believe me about that either ;)

I thought it'd be fairly easy to keep this a secret for just a day, but it proved to be a challenge! Our church folk put the pressure on Friday night ;)'  Then I talked to my mom on the phone and had to get off before I spoiled it.

Today, we had the gender reveal party! Finally!

For the reveal, Cory was dead-set on cake and I was dead-set on balloons. So we compromised. We got a cake and went ahead and had the batter made blue. Which I thought was even more perfect, because you know as soon as they saw the cake they thought the reveal would be in the color of the inside. However, we also had a balloon stuck in the middle of the cake. And the balloon was filled with blue sprinkles!! How fun?!

Before we popped the balloon, we took their guesses and added it to our existing tally from our Facebook guesses and from some co-workers. 

The final tally of guesses was:

Boy: 20

Girl: 18

Popping the ballon was fun!

Sprinkles went everywhere and people shouted, "Oh, it's a boy!" 

It was a lot of fun! Such a great day!

Everyone seemed quite happy :)  He'll be the first grandson on both sides! Yay! 

Other things about my doctor visit - I had lost a pound and the doc didn't approve. My doctor is the kind of doctor that uses your pre-baby weight to base things off of. He's also one of those doctors that doesn't want you to gain too much or too little weight. He told me he'd not get too anxious about it until my next visit and kept asking me if I was still sick with nausea, and I'm not sure he believed me when I said I had barely had any nausea at all in the last 3 weeks.

I'd had exposure to Chicken Pox this past week and so he ran a bunch of blood work for that - among a million other things it seemed.

He told me to pace myself during workouts, not to lift anything too heavy, and no jumping.

To end with, here are my son's most recent pictures…. along with the proof that he is indeed a he ;)'

And for those of you who see ultrasounds like 'cloud pictures' (as the hubby puts it), here's a break down: