The big reveal

It's a BOY!!!

'Shocked' is the only way to describe my state when the technician told me. Shocked. But SO excited. I would have of course been excited either way - truly neither DH nor I had a preference in the least - but it was certainly fun that we got to add a big surprise to all of the excitement. Of course it seems silly that we'd be surprised that we couldn't pinpoint the gender based on heartrate and nausea and gender predictor charts, but somehow we really had allowed our minds to settle on the idea that it was a little girl in there.

I had mentioned to the tech as soon as we started that I wanted to know the gender. He was like "ok but you know we can never be 100% sure..." It wasn't 15 seconds later when he was wanding around looking for the feet that he exclaimed "it's a boy, the baby is a little boy!" and he didn't even stop to make sure, he just kept wanding right on down to the feet. I thought it was hilarious that he was so sure given that (a) he hadn't actually paused the wand to examine and make sure and (b) he had just finished telling me that he couldn't be totally sure. The scan seemed to go fine otherwise, the tech didn't see any cause for concern (which was blissful to hear) but we have to wait to hear the real verdict from my OBG in a few days. DH was a little late to the appointment and missed those first few minutes during which the tech decided it was a boy, but upon hearing how obvious the gender was to the tech DH said to me, excitedly, "that means it must be big!" SUCH a guy.

I am so so so excited. We're thinking about names now, and themes for the nursery (dogs probably)...this is all so fun and exciting. My parents are particularly excited because they had all girls.

Of course I had to go and ruin all the good news by getting into a near-miss on the way home from the appointment. I was turning left across an intersection and took my eyes off of the oncoming traffic to make sure all the pedestrians had gotten to the other side of the crosswalk before I made the turn. Just as I was accelerating I saw an oncoming car that I hadn't noticed and had to slam on the brakes. I wasn't going very fast and didn't feel any severe jolt - it didn't feel like I was thrown into the seatbelt or anything. But in true form I freaked out - probably because I've been reading things about "Go directly to the ER or your doc if you get in even a minor collision, immediately!, even if you feel fine, even slamming on your breaks can cause placental abruption!"

But there was no collision, it's 24 hours later, I have zero symptoms of anything being amiss, and the baby's hb sounds strong as ever so I'm inclined to stop worrying about it. Placental abruption is a scary thing and we can never be too careful, but on the other hand, we can't go running to our doctors every time we need to stop our car suddenly...right? I had already been morphing into a super-defensive driver and after this incident, I'm downright 'elderly' about driving.