60% doesn't mean what it used to

At our 12 week ultrasound appointment, the ultrasound technician turned to me and said, "are you going to be finding out the sex?"

"Ugh." I said. "Yes."

It had been a matter of some debate. Not between Sandy and I, we were both totally Gung-Ho-To-Know, as it were, but amongst our friends, family, confidants...* Everyone had an opinion. (Everyone usually does.) Most vocal in her feelings was my mother-in-law, who believes with vigor that the sex of one's future offspring is the LAST GREAT SURPRISE in the world, and should not be meddled with.

I, on the other hand, believe that the world is full of nearly nothing BUT surprises, not least of which is the fact that every morning I wake up in a rather large house next to the nicest guy I've ever met, and I am still not entirely sure how all of that happened.

But I digress. My desire to know was motivated by two things.

1. Being able to hang a name on the wee one asap, so that I could start calling him or her something other than Bob. Bob is a lovely name, but it has always signified to me a stout elderly gentleman with a moustache and, perhaps, a predilection for carving duck decoys. The idea of calling my Mystery Fetus that for the entire nine months, and thus picturing a tiny moustached gentleman carving duck decoys within my belly, was terrifying.

2. I really, really wanted a girl. I am completely ill-equipped to handle a boy - they have always been a cipher to me, (which is no doubt why I am still surprised by my marital status). And I thought, it would be a terrible idea, for me to go into that delivery room not knowing the sex but hoping for a girl, and to go through labor which according to all accounts is an experience just shy of Living Hell, and then to give birth to a boy.

I could picture the scene - me, a trembling exhausted wreck of humanity, the doctor holding up the newly-born baby and saying, "it's a boy!" and me screaming "Nooooooooooooooooo!!!!!!" and bursting into tears. Well, additional tears. I'm sure there'd be plenty of tears to go around at that point. Like some horrible parody of Catherine the Great or Ann Boleyn, only in reverse.

It doesn't bear thinking about. Everyone in the room would figure that I already had postpartum depression, or that I was going to be the Worst Mother In The History of the World. (Worse even than Hitler's mom, who was probably a lovely lady but let's be honest, she really screwed up somewhere.) So I figured, I'd better find out ahead of time. I would need the three or four months to deal with the idea of a little boy, if that was what I was having. And we hadn't really picked a boy's name yet. I had my girl's name, but nothing for a boy. Yes. We definitely needed to know asap.

So. "Ugh. Yes."

The tech said, "would you like my best guess?" Sandy and I were shocked. We had no idea they could tell so soon. Only 12 weeks! (10 weeks gestational age!) This was amazing!

"Sure?" I said, in surprise, after a glance at Sandy to confirm that he was okay with this.

"Well. At this stage, they're pretty much all outties, regardless. But if it's a girl, usually the equipment is lying horizontally...you see this? That's straight up vertical. I think you're having a boy."

I manfully, (womanfully?), did not burst into tears and wail and gnash my teeth and tear my hair. I could see Sandy looking mildly relieved, (and also poleaxed, like all men look nearly all the time at OB visits...like they've just been hit in the head with something heavy), - he would not have to buy a shotgun just yet. "Oh." I said. "Thank you."

Of course, I was thinking, she could be totally wrong. It's really early yet.

Our next ultrasound was with Dr. G, at 16 weeks. Much to my dismay, he confirmed her report, going so far as to tell us he was 80% sure of his diagnosis.

"Things," he said meaningfully, "are looking pretty full down there."

Which I understood as him saying that there was a whole lot of genitalia in the region, whereas with a girl things would be a little more introspective. As it were. Um. Crap, I thought.

Well. Better luck next time. Still, a tiny Candle in the Wind of hope was flickering deep in my subconscious. 20% chance!

Sandy and I started discussing boys' names, all the same. I went out and bought a pirate growth chart for the wall...(Sandy loves all things piratical and if we had a girl, she'd just have to deal with having a pirate growth chart. Pirates! Fun for Both Sexes!) I was adjusting my thoughts, at glacial slowness, to the notion of Male Child.

Then came the 20 week ultrasound, where they examine all the bits and bobs and measure every long bone in the body, the skull...everything. Bob was not being entirely cooperative during the portion where she had to get different views of the heart, so she made me lie on my side to shift him to a better position. Viola the picture below:

Shove over, Bob! The sooner you cooperate, the sooner she'll stop jiggling you!

Also, please note the GIGANTIC PAPER NAPKIN. I want these things for my house. For real.

Anyway, the 20 week ultrasound was nuts. It was, in a word, insane. We saw the baby's eye lenses. They looked like terrifying glowing rings of doom in the creepy black eyesocket cavities in the skull. We saw lips! They were very cute! We saw thumbs, which I was personally very relieved to see, (what with my thumbless-baby nightmares), and we also saw this:

In point of fact it was the very first view she showed us. Bob is evidently not the least bit shy about his assets, and had no problem squatting on top of the ultrasound paddle to give us a REALLY good look at what he was working with. Good. Gravy. Dr. G wasn't kidding when he said things were looking "a bit full." There was absolutely no mistaking what we were looking at. But I had to ask anyway.

"Is that...? Is that...um???"

The ultrasound tech said, "are you finding out the sex?"**

"Yes..." I sighed. The sex was staring us all in the face. Even if we'd WANTED to avoid it, we couldn't have.

"It's a boy!" she announced cheerfully, smiling like the cherry on the very top of a gigantic banana split.

"Ah." I said. Sandy patted my hand comfortingly. No doubt visions of our future procreative endeavors were already dancing before his eyes. She'll want to try again to get a girl! ROCK!!!

The tech got on with her measuring and printing out of photographs of Bob, (who was now confirmed as a Bob, although I saw no duck decoys or other scrimshaw equipage floating nearby, luckily).

20 minutes or so later, I said, hesitantly, "there's no way that, you know, the genitals we saw earlier aren't just, um...like a really, really big clitoris, or something? I mean, he's DEFINITELY a boy, right? No chance of a girl?" The tech stared at me like I'd grown a second, third, and possibly fourth head. Her voice, when she answered, was ripe with irony and a soupcon of sarcasm.

"Not that I'm aware of, no."

"Ah," I said again, and lapsed back into silence. A boy. Oh god. Oh god. And not just a boy, but a rather impressively hung boy. Oh good god. DOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM!

The doctor came in to tell us that everything looked just fine. The baby is measuring almost perfectly correct, (his stomach is a few days ahead of the rest of him. I know exactly how he feels), and that he won't have to see me again until around the 34th week, when he wants to get a measurement again of the baby's size, since I'm hypothyroid. But so far, so good. And a boy! Congratulations!

I considered glaring at him, but settled instead for saying, very meekly, "thank you." I mean, it's not HIS fault Bob is a boy. (It's Sandy's fault. Obviously). And at least Bob has a definite gender! The 10% of y'all who thought I was giving birth to Baby X can totally suck it! Hahahahaha!

To the 50% of you who thought I was having a girl - thank you for the thought. It was a lovely thought. But there's always the next time.

After all, it's not like I can send him back. And I've definitely worked pretty hard to get him this far. And he's STILL the same baby that gave me the finger at the 16 week ultrasound. So no doubt he's going to be an interesting little dude. Boy.

I can handle this, right? It's all soap box cars, skinned knees and an unfortunate propensity for urinating on Things Not A Toilet, right? I mean, the organized sports aspect of things are going to present a problem, because I'm hopeless at working in a group and Sandy has like, negative 300 interest in football and baseball...but I'm sure we'll adjust! And there will be an absolute moratorium on blowing up frogs and pulling the legs off spiders!***because I will make sure he grows up with an appropriate respect for All of God's Creatures, dammit! And anyway, I like boy stuff better than girl stuff! Tree forts! Mud pies! Catching frogs! (And releasing them safely back into the wild! Or Else!) A boy! I CAN HANDLE THIS!

(I hope.)

*One of the first things you learn when pregnant is how to smile politely when someone gives you completely unasked-for advice. Especially when it espouses an opinion diametrically opposed to your own.

And also to not take offense when a total stranger lurches across a mall to grope your stomach and coo "when are you due???" at you.

**Am I the only person to think that that phrase, "are you finding out the sex?" sounds almost like the sort of thing that a foreign person, with incomplete knowledge or understanding of the English language, might say as a pick up line in a bar? Followed perhaps by "you I am finding the sexy very much." And a lewd eyebrow wiggle.

***It's entirely possible that my younger brother Sean only just missed becoming a sociopath due to lack of ambition but he's definitely left me with some impressions of Youthful Boyhood that I won't forget in a hurry. Or ever.