Finding out

A few weeks ago we went to the doctor for my 16 week appointment. We both thought that you absolutely had to wait until 20 weeks to find out the gender of your baby, but the first words out of my doctor's lips when she walked into the examining room were, "so, do you want to find out if it's a boy or girl?"

We looked at each other with excitement and exclaimed, "YES!"

She wheeled in the ultrasound machine, gooped up my stomach and flipped the switch. I was so surprised how much bigger the baby looked than last time. The ear doctor was excited to see both sides of the brain looking symmetric. I though the seeing each of the little spinal vertebrae was breathtaking. After taking some measurements, the doctor rotated the paddle around to attempt to determine the gender.

Our baby's little legs were shut as tight as can be. The doctor poked and prodded to entice it to move. I jumped and jiggled to get a better view, but we were stymied.

We'll have to wait another 4 weeks to find out what we're having.


As we walked away from the office the ear doctor admitted that he was glad we had a dry run of that moment. A first stab at running through those emotions without really having the deal with them. Whereas I was unreservedly excited to find out, he was a bit anxious and nervous.


So we don't know if we're having a boy or a girl yet...but we do know one thing: our kid's a modest little thing. The ear doctor is so proud.