House of Holland: Pink or Blue?

My partner and I decided we did want to know the baby's sex because: I really felt like I needed to "be prepared." I wanted to prepare myself mentally for the challenges that a boy or girl would bring. I wanted to be able to do my favorite thing in the world, decorate the nursery in gender-appropriate colors. I wanted to be settled on a name ahead of time. At some point, we would love to get to experience the surprise of not finding out the sex, but not for this go around.

I predicted the sex to be: a girl. Virtually everyone thought it was a girl and lots of old wives' tales predicted a girl too.

The experience: Instead of waiting until our 20 week ultrasound to find out the sex, we paid a little extra to have an extra ultrasound at 16 weeks and find out a month early. I counted down the days until Friday, March 25 and then counted down the hours until 3:00 p.m.

We had the joy of inviting some loved ones to be with us for this appointment, so I left work and headed the doctor's office to meet my mom, dad, brother and sister-in-law there. JR followed me by a few minutes, arriving with our neighbors/friends, Hillary and Kevin. JR's mom made an appearance via cell phone, right as she was about to take off on a flight out of Oklahoma at the time of our appointment.

The office was quiet, because they do these early ultrasounds after regular business hours, but there was another couple in the waiting room with us. Even though the doctor's office had told us that could invite people to come with us for this appointment, I called just to make sure it was okay to bring a group of 8! It was really fun to have our group there to wait and pass the time with us and I felt relieved to see a group come out of their ultrasound that had squeezed an entourage into the ultrasound room with them too.

They finally called us around 3:30 p.m. and we all filed into the room and met our stenographer/ultrasound tech, Joe. (Incidentally, Joe had done an ultrasound on my mom a number of years back!). Everyone crowded around to get a view of the monitor and I stuffed a big plasticy drop cloth into my jeans while Joe put the goop on my belly. As always, as soon as I saw the baby shape and begged Joe to know if he/she was "okay" I let out a sigh of relief. We got to look at the baby's profile and hear the heartbeat again. FINALLY, he said "well are you guys ready to know now?" and after an emphatic yes he said "say 'hi' to your little.......*long pause*......your little boy!" Lot's of clapping and exclamations and screams followed. Then Joe gave us a little tour of my uterus, showing us a head-on shot of the baby, a little foot with toes, an elbow and arm, his boy parts, listened to the heartbeat and giving us some factual information about the baby's developmental thus far. We all predicted it was a girl, so I was really prepared to hear him say "girl" and that pause before he uttered "boy" seemed like it was in slow-motion. Obviously, we would have loved to have a boy or a girl, but I really did feel relieved to hear it was what we had hoped for!

Back in the waiting room, Jenni gave us our first set of boy onesies.

Then we all headed to The Usual to celebrate! Unfortunately, we were there 20 minutes before opening, so the boys went to Yucatan for tacos, I got a coconut limeade from Spiral Diner (best drink ever), and the Golls were nice enough to drive back to our house and wait to meet someone from the car dealer dropping off our newly fixed Murano. We all reunited at The Usual for celebratory drinks before heading to an early dinner and the beginning of the Love & Respect marriage conference.

It was so worth it to find out the sex early and to share the experience with our family. Thank you all for being there with us!

Unfortunately the ultrasound photos are a bit fuzzy from the scan, but enjoy them and the other photos below: