Ultrasounds and Gender Reveal!

I don’t know why I’ve been hoarding them. It’s not like they’re a big secret or anything, but I think that now’s a good time to share them.

Thing is, either you’re an experienced parent and can manage to read (or imagine) the image, or you are like I was and squint and hope to make sense of the white lines and blobs that you see. What no one bothers to explain to you before you go in is that it makes a lot more sense when you see the images live. There is so much more information that you see as the ultrasound travels through the layers of skin, bones, and organs. Those little moments frozen in time on that shiny little black and white paper are like trying to get a good shot from a black and white VHS video by pausing it over and over again.

So anyway, without further ado, here are images from our little one, but if you are dying to know the baby’s sex, you can skip to the bottom! You can see the dates on the sonograms and here, let me translate to how far along we were: 5/30, week 7; 7/08, 12w 4d; 8/06, 16w 6d; 8/26, 19w 4d.

We’re having a baby girl!

If you went through the slideshow, you’ll see that we actually knew we had a girl about a month ago. I just couldn’t wait and went to the mall to get a gender reveal (should be called a sex reveal, but whatever!). I was so excited and relieved that I wouldn’t have to learn about baby boys just yet. I’m the oldest of four girls, it’s all I know! Juan had mildly hoped for a boy because he is familiar with his older brother/younger sister setup, but quickly came to adore the fact that he will have a daddy’s girl. We waited to share the news until we had the anatomy scan this week because we wanted confirmation. When they still said she was a girl, we were happy with the confirmation and ready to tell people.

Seeing these sonograms, it’s so crazy to see the change. I mean, my first one at 7 weeks is just this puny little itty bitty thing! Everything has been going smoothly and measurements are all textbook, so I am really happy to be having a normal, nice pregnancy.

This might be it for ultrasounds though. I think my doc is done with them. I am still trying to convince Juan to go do the 3D/4D ultrasound at around 27 weeks (which is the recommendation) but he thinks it’s kind of a waste. Did you have one done? Would you have had one if it was popular when you had your kids? I think they can be neat and any new info or way to get a glimpse of my baby is something I embrace.

PS: I did a few surveys to see what people thought we would have. My entire family (and Juan’s) said they thought we were having boys. On Facebook it was more evenly split (among those who answered). Interestingly, just from people talking to me, most people said they thought I would have a boy. I wonder why FB was different.