Sugar, Spice and Everything Nice

When we started the ultrasound I could clearly see that the baby had its legs crossed. The sonographer confirmed that indeed our baby was not going to give away any secrets at the moment. At our last ultrasound, our bean slept the entire time so on the advice of other moms, I ate chocolate at 8am in the hopes baby would do a happy dance from trace amounts of caffeine and sugar.


While waiting for the baby to uncross its legs, the sonographer examined in great detail the entire anatomy. She pointed out the 4 chambers of the heart, the spine, 10 tiny fingers, 10 little toes and the 2 hemispheres of the brain. She giggled when the baby moved its legs or flailed its arms saying our bean was very cute.

Perhaps there was a note in our file but while examining me, she stated that she too had undergone IVF several times with no success. My heart broke for her. This poor lady has a job that requires her to see beaming pregnant ladies all day long and stare at their precious babies on screen. We both offered our sympathies to her. As luck and life would have it though, she did have a miracle baby of her own...6 years after giving up fertility treatments. After sharing my ultrasound experience with friends who are expecting, I truly feel that I have had amazing technicians who took time to explain everything in great detail. Today was no exception and I sense that our technician knew just how anxious we were because she too, had been in our shoes.

As she approached the baby’s bottom she asked again if we wanted to know the sex of our baby.

YES! YES! YES!

I can tell you with confidence because the baby has shown me its gender several times during the examination.

My immediate reaction was that we were having a little boy. Surely the great gender reveal was a penis during her examination!

‘’It’s a beautiful baby girl’’, she exclaimed.

And just like that, we became the proud parents-to- be of a girl.

I know that I don’t have another experience to compare with but I don’t feel for 1 second that the magic of finding out the sex of our baby was any less significant than it would be at birth. I was in a dreamlike bubble the entire day. The following night we went out for dinner to celebrate our daughter otherwise lovingly known now as Princess Bean.