Finding Out

Where have you been, you might very well ask me. My writing has taken a sharp decline of late, it’s true. But I have good excuses, if you like to hear them.
 
Nightmares
The night before the ultrasound, Meg woke me up at 1:30 AM with a nightmare. She’d dreamt that we were having an ultrasound and the doctor discovered that the baby was covered in eyes.
 
“It was horrible,” Meg said, shaking. “I was yelling, ‘It’s a monster, get it out of me.’ You were saying, ‘Aw, it’s my baby and I will love it forever,’ even though the baby had eyes all over its body.”
 
I held her and told her that it was going to be all okay. I realized that I had low blood sugar and padded over to the kitchen to check—it was 59—and drank some orange juice. I returned to the bedroom and told her that I was thankful that she’d woken me up. I slid back in bed and ran my fingertips over her arms until I fell asleep.
 
The next day, however, the day of the ultrasound, a worry nagged me. What if the baby was unhealthy? What if it was covered in eyes, or something else was wrong? The last time—the only time—we had an ultrasound, it was the size of blueberry. I pushed the thought to the back of my mind and waited anxiously at work until Meg picked me up.

Potted Babies
They led Meg to the restroom to give a urine sample and pointed me to the ultrasound room. Two Anne Geddes posters festooned the walls. One was a small shirtless girl contemplating her own belly. Perhaps this was a commentary on the brevity of life, or of the cyclical nature of human origins. All I know is that it made me uncomfortable. The second Geddes poster hung behind my chair. I craned my neck and frowned at the wretched scene: a yard full of terracotta flowerpots, a baby in each one.
 
Meg came into the room. “That’s kind of disturbing,” she said, reading my expression. “Not a single one of those babies look happy.”
 
I peered closer at the poster, noticing that in the thirty or forty potted babies, not even one appeared to be enjoying it. I wondered why so many parents would agree to have their children sit uncomfortably in a flowerpot while Geddes snapped the picture. Some of the babies appeared on the verge of tears. I turned around and tried to focus on happier topics.

Healthy? Boy or Girl?
The doctor entered with a medical student in tow. He got down to business right away by squeezing a large mound of ultrasound gel on Meg’s belly from a ketchup bottle. I pondered if that’s how he put mustard on his hotdogs. Meg told me later that he managed to fill her entire bellybutton with gel. I turned my head to the wall away from Meg to where a TV hung.
 
“I’m going to take some measurements first,” the doctor said.
 
Ultrasounds are weird to watch. It’s like looking at a baby sliced thinly into cross-sections.  The doctor found the baby’s skull and used a mouse to measure the length from one side to the other, then the elliptical distance between the sides of the skull to the base. The doctor shifted to look at our baby’s spine—a little curved bony thing. Then a femur, which he measured.
 
“That’s a tall baby!” Meg laughed. The doctor took no notice and continued.
 
He shifted to the baby’s face ever so briefly—I looked for its eyes and saw only two, to my relief. The baby moved a little—I gasped softly. Then a whirlwind of movement as the doctor looked for other body features. I saw a foot clearly, a perfect little foot with five toes.

He stopped the image between the baby’s legs. “And these three lines are the labia and vagina,” he said with a matter-of-fact monotone. “I can say with 95% certainty it’s a girl.”

He said some other words of caution about uncertainty as I looked at the TV screen, then looked at Meg. “A girl!” I whispered to her, laughing with relief. The medical student grinned at us.

The Sex Party
The afternoon at work slipped away like sand through my fingers. I arrived home to find Meg had gone shopping. We were going to announce the sex of our baby to Meg’s parents and her brother and his wife and have them over for dinner.

Meg and I smiled at each other. I kissed her and patted her belly. “A girl!” I squealed.

“Uh-huh,” Meg said.

“You’re not too disappointed, are you?” I teased her. Meg had wanted a boy more than me.

“Not at all,” she smiled, rubbing her belly absentmindedly. She looked around the messy kitchen. “Did you want to clean up or cook?”

“Clean up,” I answered. “It’s my job anyway.”

Our family arrived soon thereafter. I got everyone drinks and everyone sat down in the living room expectantly.

Meg disappeared into our bedroom and returned with her hand behind her back. She stood in front of everyone and said slowly, “Sooo….” She produced a tiny yellow sundress on a little hanger.

The family was silent for a moment, and then burst out, “A girl!”

“I didn’t know what it was at first,” Mom explained. “I was expecting pink or blue, not yellow! And then I saw it was a dress. Oh, a girl!”

Someone asked what we were going to name her.

“Emma Charlotte,” Meg said.

We are going to name our baby girl Emma Charlotte. Our perfectly healthy, darling baby girl Emma.