boy oh BOY!

My sister in law once told me, “You’ll know if it’s a boy or girl. You’ll just feel it. I knew.” After she said that, I felt it was my duty to create such a bond that I could know. I thought I would have failed if I didn’t have whatever motherly intuition would allow me to have that connection with my baby.

Well, I didn’t know. I tried. To be honest, when I pictured things, I saw girl things - pink curtains in the nursery and lavender onesies stacked neatly on the dresser. But then I consulted the Chinese gender predictor, which said it was a boy. And most of my family and friends seemed to think it was a boy. So then I just decided that I really didn’t know.

It didn’t matter anyway, since all we wanted was a healthy baby.

Today was our ultrasound. For days (weeks?) I had been anxious about this appointment. Thoughts and fears flooded my mind. What if something was wrong? What if I noticed a look of doubt in the ultrasound tech’s eyes? I knew that it was up to God, which gave me peace, and I was finally able to come to the realization that it was all going to be okay, one way or another.

Still, my heart raced as we followed the tech down the sterile fluorescent hall of the doctor’s office into the dimly lit room that was centered around an exam table and the huge ultrasound machine. “Here we go,” I thought as I made myself comfortable on the table, taking deep breaths and glancing over at Ryan.

I didn’t know how seeing the baby would make me feel. I thought it might be weird, for some reason. After all, the last time we saw him, he was just centimeters long and looked like a little peanut. What would he look like now?

As soon as the tech had me prepped and placed the ultrasound arm thing on my belly, it was like the weight of the world was lifted off of my shoulders. There was our baby. This wasn’t a weird or scary situation. It was absolutely wonderful. The tech scanned over everything, explaining what was what along the way. She assured us that everything looked perfect, and that the baby was growing just as he should be. We got to see the brain, heart, spine, face, the hands and feet (The FEET! They might be the cutest things I’ve ever seen in my life…), most of the skeletal system, and of course, the genitalia.

The tech telling us, “Well, you’re going to have a little boy,” was how we found out. The words were so simple yet so profound. Before she said that, I had been happy and calm, focussing on the healthy, beautiful baby on the screen. When she said, “Well, you’re going to have a little boy,” I felt something else, something indescribable. With damp eyes, all I could do was stare at the screen and laugh. A boy. A BOY! Everything became real. This is a real baby - our baby. Our son. Wow. Something about those eight words change our entire world.

Laughter. That’s what I’ll remember. I’ve laughed a lot throughout the past five months… I am starting to learn that that’s what I do when I’m overwhelmingly happy. I laugh! Even if I have tears in my eyes, I’m laughing.

I feel so incredibly blessed after today and I can’t wait for what’s to come. It seems like now the fun begins… Bring on the nesting, registering and planning!