12/19/2009

Wow, I didn’t realize it had been so long since I’d written!  When I opened up the box to write there was an auto-save from last month, but I guess I never got around to finishing.  Oops!

Today is the first day of winter break, so I am feeling pretty relaxed, and definitely have a few minutes to write.  Laying in bed on a Saturday morning watching re-runs of Law and Order and flipping to the Food Network…what could be better?  In a little while I will get my butt in gear and hopefully get the house picked up enough that we can finally pull out our Christmas decorations.  Better late than never!

I had to write today, because we had such an exciting day yesterday!  From the beginning…

At my last doctor’s appointment, they scheduled me for my next ultrasound (when we could finally find out the gender of the baby).  My mom kept asking me to try to make them do it before Christmas, because she was just dying to know.  Many offices will do them starting at 18 weeks, but when I was making the appt., I found out that our doctor has a policy of not doing them anytime before 20 weeks.  For me, that is the week after Christmas.  I was surprised at how disappointed I was…I mean, it’s only one week!!  I just really wanted to be able to tell my mom (and to know myself).  Anyway, a friend suggested we go to a place that does elective ultrasounds…I did not know that existed.  I googled and found that there are quite a lot of places in our area that will do this, and most have fairly low-cost options for a simple 2-D gender prediction ultrasound (their real business is the more expensive 3-D u/s).  I went back and forth for several weeks, but this week finally decided to go for it.  It actually worked out really well, because we were able to schedule it for one of Ryan’s days off, so he won’t have to take off work to come with me to my doctor’s office…financially we came out ahead of the game!

We had our appointment yesterday afternoon at 1:00.  I was so nervous!  Ryan had made no secret about how much he wanted a little boy…I think little girls are a little more scary to him, and we also planned to name the baby after his late father if it was a boy.  His brother and wife and currently trying to get pregnant, so I think he was a little anxious to get the name first! =)  Anyway, I didn’t really care, but the further we got into the pregnancy, the more I wanted a boy for him.  I had a feeling about it too…just when I thought about the baby, I thought of it as a boy.  I even bought Ryan a little Spiderman kid’s book last weekend, that I hoped to give him when we found out.

I’m always nervous before any kind of appointment with the baby, but yesterday was particularly nerve-wrecking.  It was a nice place though…they had the ultrasound machine hooked up to a large monitor on the wall so we had a good view of everything.  The technician started the ultrasound, and almost right away said, "Well, it’s a boy!"  as she showed us the proof. =)  I turned to Ryan and said, "You got your boy!  High-five!"  We were both so happy.  It was amazing to see him in there on the ultrasound.  Even though we paid for the 2-D, she actually showed us quite a bit in 3-D as well.  I always think the 3-D is a little creepy, but it WAS really cool to see so much detail.  He had his little hands in front of his face most of the time, and was staying pretty curled up, but it was so neat to see him yawn and stretch and move around…he’s really in there!!  Ryan even got to hear the heartbeat for the first time.  It was a wonderful 10 minutes.

After the u/s, we went to Target to buy a children’s book for my mom called "Little Boy."  I was so sure that it was a boy that I almost bought it last weekend, but didn’t want to go quite that far.  We didn’t buy anything else, but we did walk through the baby section looking at all the little boy clothes – what fun!  We went to get some lunch and then went to my mom’s office to surprise her.  She had no idea we were doing the ultrasound, so this was sort of an early Christmas present for her too.  She was so excited!  I think there was a part of her that was hoping we were having a girl, but she was thrilled to find out and see all the pictures of the baby.  I think she is going to come with me to my next u/s at the doctor’s office since Ryan will be at work…she’s excited about that too.

Last night we were laying in bed and there was a very persistent thumping from my uterus…I started feeling these thumps this week, but last night it was constant!  I think now that we know who he is, he wants to make his presence known!  I can’t wait until Ryan can feel him moving too!

Joseph Patrick will be here in about five months!!