first pictures

i had my twenty week ultrasound today and found out that we're having a baby boy!* a change-up to the routine will be exciting and different for us. randy and i would have been thrilled with either, but madeleine has been telling us for a few weeks now that the baby is going to be a boy because she already has a little sister. i guess this made it easier, rather than having to explain her faulty logic, as well as laws of genetics.

everything else looked healthy and i am on track with my due date, so this boy should be debuting some time around april 8th next year.

i love finding out the gender of my baby. i know that some people like to be surprised, but i am not one of them. this is when i bond with my baby. it enables me to stop thinking of my baby as a little parasite inside of me that makes me sick and uncomfortable (twenty weeks is also when i start to feel much better, so that probably contributes to this feeling) and start thinking of it as a real, live, baby that is growing inside of me and that is eventually going to join our family. if the ultrasound technician could not pinpoint the gender, i would fully be willing to pay out of pocket for an elective ultrasound. how did they do it back in the day? the suspense, not childbirth, would have been what killed me.

i love being able to put not just a pronoun with the baby, but a name. once again, i know that there are people who like to wait and meet their baby before they pin a name on them and i understand that, but again, i am not one of them. with all of our babies, we have given them a name within a day or two of the ultrasound and stuck with it. being able to call the baby by name when referring to it helps me bond with it and think of it as a real person.

i can't wait to meet this one in person.

as i side, i just have to mention that ultrasounds baffle me. this is my fourth one (i had two with madeleine because they couldn't get some measurements the first time) and i was only slightly less lost this time. the ultrasound technician cruises around my stomach, announcing grey fuzzy spots as kidneys, amniotic fluid (although that is actually black), and other body parts, but it all looks sketchy to me. she could be shooting from the hip most of the time and i would have no idea. i also do not understand how she can be showing me the brain one second, move the wand (i'm sure this is the technical term) a fraction of an inch, and suddenly we're looking at the feet. it's a topsy-turvy, magical thing to me. but as long as she can clearly decipher which gray fuzzy spots belong to which gender, i'm happy.

*surprise! to those of you that did not know i was pregnant.