It's a Girl!

Baby Early has a pronoun now. She's a Girl! The ultrasound was amazing. First of all, she was moving all over the place and completely active the whole time, even doing an entire back flip toward the end. This despite the fact that I had actually NOT dosed myself up on sugar like I had thought I might. It was all her own doing. It turns out that active babies are actually not as easy to ultrasound. I think it takes longer to pin down all the right positions and capture the images they are trying to capture to get all the desired measurements when they are moving around so much. If it takes that much time to chase her around in the womb, I can't imagine how we are going to have our hands full when this little one learns to walk.

So in all we were in the office over an hour and I'm pretty sure the ultrasound itself lasted about 40-45 minutes. I've heard many people say that within minutes of starting the ultrasound their technician declared boy or girl. We were kept in suspense for what I imagine was more than 30 minutes as we hunted for this angle or that, measuring femurs and heartbeats, capturing feet (there were two), and seeing hands open and close. Oh my goodness, even just a bony silhouette and she is so beautiful! For a while she kept her legs crossed like a dainty little girl and I started to get worried we wouldn't get conclusive results. But eventually everything lined up and we got a clear shot. No signs of anything between the legs and the three distinct lines that they look for coming through quite clear. The tech declared "girl" with the disclaimer that these things aren't always 100% accurate. But the evidence was quite plain and convincing to me.

It started to sink in as Don and I held hands for the remaining 10 minutes of the exam and tears began to form. When the exam ended, the tech left the room for a few minutes to make us a CD and then I really let the tears go as Don and I bonded over the news that we were bringing a daughter into the world. It was one of the highlights of my life. Having trouble at the moment thinking of anything that tops it. We were forced to come back to the present for a bit then as I developed a nose bleed and had to attend to that.

As we left the lab, we decided to go to one of our newly discovered favorite restaurants in Bellingham to celebrate - Magdelena's Creperie. The first phone call was to my Mom and of course I was still crying when I told her the news. She asked if I was hoping for a girl. I told her that I wasn't aware of having any preference but when I got the news I was soooo happy. I didn't know if that meant that deep down I really did have a preference after all, or if it was just that the whole thing had become so much more real and would have had the same experience if the results had been different. Don concurred that he felt the exact same way.


The cashew shaped thing right and center is the babies bottom (butt towards the camera). You can see the femur bone in the lower leg. The upper leg is fading off into the darkness. In between the legs you can see it looks pretty vacant. Looking closely, the three little white parallel lines are what they look for to identify the girl parts.


She was opening and closing her hands right before this frame was snapped.


Is there anything cuter than baby feet?!