In a way, I never thought I would reach this point.
*Knowing the sex of my baby
*Beginning to show a slight bump that is noticeable by people I run into
*Actually feeling pregnant (the first trimester was a blessing and a curse because I rarely felt stereotypical pregnancy symptoms)
*Starting to confidently buy baby items
*Making real plans for April in terms of maternity leave, husband taking work off for the last week of school, birth plan, etc.
It's not that I did not think I would be pregnant past the first trimester or that I would ever be pregnant. However, I am an extremely sensitive person when it comes to the topic of pregnancy and children and in order to make it through the first five years of my marriage without ever seeing a live baby on the ultrasound monitor, I needed to close off the baby part of my brain to save me emotionally. Whenever something got through to the baby part of my brain (negative pregnancy test, positive pregnancy test with negative doctor's appointment, friends talking nonstop about their children, etc.) it would take a while to heal from those occurrences. Because of all the pain I had gone through, I never dreamed to think about my own baby or having a large, pregnant stomach, or anything past conception.
When I was around fourteen week along, I woke up one morning to a nice stream of blood in the toilet and I panicked. I went and woke up husband who asked if I wanted to go to the ER. Being the practical person that I am, I did not want that. Because I was only in my first trimester and nothing could be done to save the baby at that point, waiting a few hours to get in to see the doctor would not change a thing. I went to school to get ready for a sub and upon coming home, I grabbed the husband to go with me on my trip to the doctor. The doctor's office will check the fetal heartbeat at any time, no appointment necessary. After a couple tantalizing minutes of the nurse rolling the monitor up and down my belly, she found a strong heartbeat. We were thankful, but husband asked if we could get on the ultrasound technician's schedule soon. After checking the front desk, we learned that there was an opening in her schedule in just a few short minutes. After hopping on the technician's table, it only took a couple seconds for the wand to be pulled out and a beautiful picture of the baby to show up on the screen. More relief. All I cared about was seeing the beating heart (although i loved seeing the spine). As I relaxed on the table, I heard husband ask the question I was waiting for. "So, can you tell the sex right now?"
The technician laughed. "I was going to check in just a second. It is probably still too early to tell, but we'll take a look."
She zoomed in on baby's genitals to see what she could see.
"At this point, nothing is certain. However, just by looking at the development, I would say that it's a girl with 70% certainty."
A girl! Maybe!
She saw a place above the placenta where the bleeding probably came from, but said we had nothing to worry about. "Take it easy for a couple days and you'll be fine."
Fast forward to this previous Thursday. I counted down the hours by the time Sunday arrived. I could not wait for the gender ultrasound (and frankly, husband was probably more excited). I was more excited to see that heart beating (which it was).
After checking the heartbeat and showing us some cute profiles of the baby, she got right to it. Pushing the baby around a bit so that the genitals were on display, she told us we were expecting a little girl!
We now have 19 pictures of baby girl on our fridge. (She's getting so big!)
Our next scheduled ultrasound will be the week before Thanksgiving for the comprehensive anatomy scan.
