It's a Boy!

Yes! It's true! Our parenting world is about to be expanded and changed. I had my big halfway-point ultrasound today and against all our expectations and theories, we are having a boy.

We did have a little inkling about this. At my last midwife appointment two weeks ago, she couldn't find the heartbeat with the doppler thingie. (Cue several minutes of intensifying anxiety. I tried to be calm because I know this happens a lot but it had never happened to me.) She gave up after a while and took me into their little ultrasound room to check things out. Fortunately, the baby was alive and wiggling around just as a baby should be and the midwife went on to check the heartbeat and so forth. It is always so awkward in those situations to refer to the baby ("she or he", "her or him") so I jokingly said to the midwife that we were pretty sure it was going to be a third girl. She said, "I don't know about that!" and after looking for a while, declared that she thought it looked more boy than girl to her. I will say that this made me anticipate my big ultrasound quite a bit more than I thought I was going to, which really doesn't make any sense, does it?

My midwifery practice sends their patients to a big maternal-fetal medicine practice at the hospital where I'll deliver for this main mid-point ultrasound. We trucked in both girls with us this afternoon and had a miserable beginning to our appointment as they were an HOUR behind schedule. Ugh, Violet totally lost it. We did eventually make it back to the ultrasound room and got a lovely long look at our new little one. They did all the measurements of the brain and heart and abdominal organs and spine and counted hands and feet and everything, and I am really grateful that he looks healthy and normal and just as he should. He had his little hands up by his face a lot, which was super adorable, but also made it hard to get good pictures. I think these ultrasound pictures are more the stereotypical blurry gray blobby things than Grace's or Violet's, but oh well...  Humorously, the picture that is the most clear and obvious is the one identifying him as a boy. Too bad my sense of propriety keeps me from posting pictures of my baby's junk on the internet, right?

So a boy! We are thrilled. We would have been so happy either way and the idea of raising three little sisters is delightful, but it is very exciting to contemplate an entirely new kind of child. We have a boy name that we've been thinking about for years now, but I think we'll let it settle for a few weeks to see if it feels right before we firmly decide. Now we can continue our track record of not circumcising our babies and have it be a more meaningful decision! And finally, a child who can be good at math! HAHAHAHAHAHA-- just kidding. It will be so interesting to me to see how our perspective on gender and parenting and toys and all that shifts with the addition of a boy. My girls wear dresses and a healthy dose of pink and love flowers and pretty things, but on the other hand, we have yet to show the girls a Disney princess movie and our books and toys are mostly gender neutral (with some exceptions-- Grace's bike is pink because I was lucky to even find one that was free of branding, the baby dolls are all obviously meant to be girls, and so forth). It will be interesting to learn to navigate a new side of gender issues.

And clothes! I saw this article making the rounds on Facebook recently and it did make me wish that gender-neutral clothes were still the norm for babies (the pictures from that article are so interesting too). We really can't have our new baby wear most of what we have in our hand-me-down boxes, though; we are not that up for a radical deconstruction of gendered clothing expectations. I think I will be smarter about what kinds/brands of clothes we buy this time. I feel like I have a better idea of what works at different ages for me and my preferences, with the cloth diapers, etc. But now what to do about all the girl clothes in plastic bins in our garage? We will obviously always keep around the clothes between Grace and Violet, but I am just itching to clean out and get rid of the things Violet has outgrown. On the other hand, what if we do adopt and end up with a girl? Will I feel stupid for having to re-buy girl clothes? But is it a good use of our space and the clothes themselves to have them sitting there unused for years "just in case"? I am doing a good job of over-thinking this.