It's a Girl!

Saturday night at my sister’s wedding reception, we revealed that we are having a girl. Actually, she made the announcement. Since it was her reception we were high-jacking, it only seemed appropriate that she be the one to tell it. Plus, she made me tell her first anyway since she allowed us to reveal it there. :)

Prior to the announcement, my belly became a crystal ball by which random people were predicting the baby’s gender. That was ……………..interesting. Literally, a few people walked up to me, put both hands on my belly, and rubbed it while saying thoughtfully and with certainty, “It’s a boy.” According to the ultrasound, they were wrong.

Immediately following the announcement (and I mean in the next breath), people began yelling out, “What’s her name?” She doesn’t have a name yet, and my standard line for that question will be, “We will name her when she’s born.” My compromise for finding out the gender (because I really wanted a surprise) is that the name, once we choose one, will remain a secret until she is born. Dave is in agreement with this because he doesn’t want people sitting around the hospital waiting room saying, “When is (insert name here) going to be here?” I agree that would be weird, plus WE will be the first people to call her by her name.

Also, I’ve gotten a lot of, “Are you excited?” Well, duh! Of course I’m excited. I’m having a baby that we planned. I was excited before the ultrasound, and the gender of the baby didn’t change that one bit. Oh, also, the walls of the nursery will still be blue. Just because she’s a girl doesn’t mean she has to be all pinked out. At this point, I don’t know if I personally will by anything pink for her just because I know that everyone else who was desperately hoping for a girl will be buying pink. In case you were wondering, I was desperately hoping for a healthy baby, and it looks like that’s on track, too.

I’m feeling snarky today, so I’m going to tell an amusing Dave story in hopes that I don’t go off on a rant about all the things that people are saying and doing about this pregnancy that are on my last nerve. Generally, I wake up at 2 a.m. every morning to use the bathroom. This is like clockwork. Occasionally, I decide that I’m too tired to get up yet and go back to sleep for about an hour before I wake up again at three. Apparently, 3 a.m. is the time that Dave usually gets up for his snack and television show. (Don’t ask – I don’t understand his nighttime habits.) Twice in the past week, I have gotten up at three and gone to the bathroom. I always leave the light off because, hey, I’ve been using a toilet for 27 years, I can manage in the dark when I don’t want to completely wake up. Both times I’ve gotten up at three, Dave has immediately gotten up and followed me to the bathroom. Knowing that he doesn’t realize I’m awake and sitting on the toilet in the dark, I say, quietly, “I’m in here.” To which he exclaims, “OH!” This is the point that I think he wakes up. Then he goes to the other bathroom and on about his routine. This morning, since the exact same sequence of events happened for the second time in a week, I just laughed and laughed at him until I fell back to sleep. When I wake up at two, he never moves. He’s a funny nighttime person.

Back to the ultrasound… We got to see everything except her face. Every time the teck got close to her face, she covered it with her hands. The bonus about that is that I get to have another ultrasound at my next appointment so they can look at her face. All of her organs and the other things they check looked normal, and her growth is right on track for her fetal age. They gave me an adjusted due date, but my doctor says we are still calling it the first week of July. He doesn’t really believe in a due date, and I tend to agree with him. Also, she wasn’t moving around during the ultrasound, regardless of the fact that I drank a Mountain Dew on the way there to get her moving. Next time, I’m going to do anything special and maybe she’ll move more.

The ultrasound really seems to be what Dave needed to start getting excited about the baby. He has been reading my book more and he learned that she will soon be able to hear outside sounds. Now in the mornings, he sings songs to her. He has also started working on the nursery. He put up the shelves that will hold all of our kid stuff, and we put together the crib over the weekend. We still have to get a bunch of stuff out of there and rearrange the furniture, but we’ve made some progress.

That’s enough for now. I will be 20 weeks tomorrow – that’s half way.