Danielle reached 20 weeks and we finally got to find out what gender our first child would be. We walked into the ultrasound room with the spunky technician lady, not really knowing what to expect. Danielle really wanted a girl so that she could dress it up and put ribbons and bows on it. I wanted a boy that I could indoctrinate with BYU sports. But in the end, neither of us had a strong preference.
Turns out, this technician lady really had a way with words. She was very effective in helping you visualize things in a way you never would have considered.
First she showed us an overall picture of the baby moving around, which was really cool:
Then we listened to the heartbeat again and she measured to make sure it was at a normal rate:
Then the technician started examining all the vitals and organs and limbs. To make sure we understood what she was looking at, should would give us some graphic metaphors, starting with the head:
"Now you see the top of the head with the little hand against the face. Now, imagine that the baby is a loaf of warm bread. We are going to go down and slice one chunk at a time and take a look at what we have inside! Oh, look—there, you can see the brain matter! It's like jelly on your slice of bread!"
And thus she continued on each level as we sliced through our unborn child. To be fair, it was very interesting and really neat to see everything displayed up on the video screen, but the analogies were a little odd.
Then she checked to make sure the baby had all its limbs:
There are the legs.
There's one little foot. The technician lady was really obsessed about the feet. She kept trying to convince us that the feet are the cutest part of the baby.
Then she tried and tried to get a good view to find out the gender, but of course the baby had its legs tucked behind and closed so we couldn't see anything. The lady gave a few nudges and the baby stretched out its legs but still kept them closed.
So Danielle went for a little walk around the block, did a few jumping jacks, and a back-flip, and then we went back inside for another try. Finally we got a good view. The technician said, "Now imagine your baby is naked and sitting up on a glass table and you are laying down underneath the table looking up. What do you see between those legs?"
To which Danielle answered, "Nothing!"
Sure enough, it's a baby girl!
We are both very excited and Danielle assured me that we would get our little girl something like this, so I can still indoctrinate her:
The down side is, we had a boy name basically decided upon, but we have no idea which girl name we like best. We won't tell anyone the name until the baby is born, but feel free to send us suggestions!
