When I was pregnant with Ben, all I wanted (and thought) about was how much I really wanted to have a baby girl. I was beyond floored that my child was a boy, when I saw his twig and dangle-berries floating merrily in his sea of amniotic fluid. And I’d be lying if I told you that it was an easier mindset to frame.
See, when you have a baby with a man you hate, the last thing you want is a son that may turn out just like him. I wanted the son, sure, but did I really want one JUST LIKE HIS FATHER? I guess it’s kinda hard to explain unless you’ve been through it.
When the ultrasound tech asked me if I wanted to know what I was having when I was pregnant with Alex, I can honestly tell you that I was Zen with either result. Over the 5 years between them, I’d gotten over cleaning the privates (very, very different and weird), gotten over the ugly clothes, and started to embrace all things boy. But I was indifferent with the result of our humpin’. Providing the baby was healthy, I was okay with either gender.
And when we got pregnant this time, after my two-in-a-row miscarriages, I spent the first many weeks pretending that I was not, in fact, pregnant. Mainly so that I could safely function for the rest of my family, rather than be consumed with worry.
While I was thrilled when the US tech pronounced this baby healthy three weeks before Thursday, since we had to go BACK for the heart and brain views, I still worried. I mean, it’s not like a child can live without those, right? And when she said that I MIGHT (but don’t do any shopping–she warned) be having a girl, I suddenly realized that this, THIS was what I had wanted.
I’m sure that I’d wanted it all along, the daughter to my other two sons, but I don’t know that I ever admitted it to myself. What good was hoping for something so out of my control that it’s laughable? I know that there are ways to do this, but I was pretty happy taking my chances.
It wasn’t until she told me that I might be having a girl (or at least a penile-y challenged boy) that I realized just how MUCH I’d wanted it. I wanted it so much that I’d see little girls during that three week wait and hope furiously that I wouldn’t be the creepy older woman secretly mourning not having produced a daughter.
So when immediately after putting the goop and the transducer on my belly, she said, “Looks like you ARE having a daughter” I might have cried a little. Perhaps more than a little. Being someone that rarely cries in the absence of physical pain, this shocked me.
Several long minutes later, having pronounced my daughter the picture of help, the Sausages were allowed back to see their sister.
Ben had been secretly pining for a sister, too, so this was incredibly welcome news. He was so tickled that the formerly cold US tech offered him not only his own picture, but a frame to put it in (Thank you, Similac!).
Even Alex stopped his normal wiggly antics to sit in silence in Dave’s arms while he was shown His Baby. Then, once Dave lovingly put the picture of Ben’s new baby into the frame, Alex promptly stole it and wandered around the waiting room to show the roomful of patients “his baby.”
Looks like The Sausages are all pretty excited about the new addition. Which I’ll savor for as long as THAT lasts.
And I haven’t stopped shopping long enough to eat, which is really saying something. Any ideas where I can get some decent girl clothes that don’t have “princess” written on them? Or look like they’re designed for miniature strippers?
The forecast today?
Sunny with a chance of PINK.
Looks like we’re having a girl. My wallet is aching already.
In a stunning fit of Did You Really Pick THAT Day? among years of this same pattern, my mother (read: babysitter) is going to be out of town tomorrow. Which is normally no big whoop for me, since I’ve been able to function without seeing my mother every day for many years now. But it’s hilarious to me since she always happens to be out of town the on the one day (or days) that I could really use her help. The timing is always perfectly, well, off for all of us.
So, this means at 8:45 AM, instead of dropping my big son off at school, I will be dragging all of the members of The Sausage Factory into my OB appointment, where I’m hoping to get a definitive look at such irrelevant structures as “The Heart” and “The Brain.”
What? I meant the Tin Man and the The Scarecrow lived without them and they were JUST FINE.
(Thankfully, although I’m not specifically trained to read ultrasounds, I was immediately able to see the baby’s wee heart, all four chambers intact, beating away the last time. This touched me more than it should have.
Along the same lines of Things That Made Me Silently Weepy But Are Weird is this: I was looking at the ultrasound picture of the Baby Sausage and noticed that in one picture it’s mouth was open. The next photo, it was shut. Why this was so incredibly heartwarming, I don’t know. I guess I realized that it takes after it’s mother in it’s inability to shut it’s mouth for a goddamned minute).
I’m also hoping to know for certain if my Blog Poll was correct, of if I merely had a boy with an unfortunately sized weenis (not that I would care AT ALL. The respective sizes of my son’s weeniers is just not important to me. In fact, I don’t WANT TO KNOW). I’m dying to call Baby Sausage anything other than that OR “it.” Just seems kinda impersonal for something that is both causing me to eat every chocolate chip cookie in sight while sweating like a sumo wrestler, right?
Oddly, I’m not as nervous now as I was for my first, since I can feel this baby moving around and boogying around in my old uterus, and since I’m aware that nothing was wrong the first time around. Just wasn’t big enough to get real measurements.
While I’m aware that tomorrow morning could be a Disaster of Epic Proportions, I’d have to have lost both legs AND arms to stop me from going.
Alex will be, well, a destructive force the likes of which are rarely seen this far from the Mason-Dixon line and Ben, well, Ben will be the most talkative narrator on the planet, peppering my poor husband with observations about everything from the sidewalk outside of the hospital, to the inevitable vending machines we’ll pass, to the plastic potted plant in the waiting room (Hel-lo Run-On Sentence!)
Looks like Dave will have his poor hands full while I get checked out.
Wish us all luck!
Meanwhile, I’m going to give my people some pictures:
First, this is a picture of my husband, The Daver, who is rarely captured on camera. He’s elusive enough that I’m quite certain there’s a subset of people who believe he’s all in my head. Or maybe not.
Here is Ben, preparing for the addition of another sibling by reading a book about siblings. Why yes, they all have the same haircut! How kind of you to notice.
And here is a picture of Alex (whom we often call “J” after his middle initial). I asked him what he thought of having a sibling. This was his response:
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