Pink or Blue?

We had our twenty-week ultrasound on Friday, and before I go any further I will say that everything went well and the baby looks good and healthy. (Which, in all honesty, even with all my worrying I expected a good report since we've had good results with our screening tests. Of course, that also doesn't stop me from all the fears still of this baby dying...)

In any case, it was a much more enjoyable and happier experience than our twenty-week ultrasound last June. The baby looks good, measured about two days earlier, and is even doing practice breaths, which our technician explained is pretty uncommon this early. Our baby's already an over-achiever. :)

I can't remember if I mentioned this before (and I'm too lazy to go back and read earlier posts to find out), but although we are normally "lets me be surprised and not find out the gender of the baby until it's born" we decided to find out the sex of our baby this time.

Part of the reason we made a difference choice this pregnancy was because we found out with Calvin and we really like knowing. But the bigger reason, for me anyway, was that I felt that finding out whether our baby was a boy or girl would help me make a bigger connection with this baby. It was very hard for me to think of this pregnancy in terms of a baby and I wanted to give myself every opportunity to feel connected and close to the baby inside me.

Of course, I had no problem feeling a deep connection with either Hope or Paige, even not knowing they were girls, but this pregnancy felt different. This pregnancy is different. Finding out whether it is a boy or girl is good for me this time around. It's what I needed.

So, as I'm sure you're ready for me to just cut to the chase and say it already.

My mother-in-law said it best:

We are just tickled pink.

xoxo, christine