“It’s” a boy (Pt. I)

The big payoff of my 20 week ultrasound came almost immediately–the first discernibly human image on the screen paused on by the ultrasound tech featured a recognizable shape–a little penis and scrotum. In each of the stills from the photobooth-like reel printed out for us at the end, there is a caption–”profile,” “face,” “foot,” etc. The fetus, looking a lot like baby-skeletor, was in an inconvenient position (and at this point immobile, though it had spent the entire morning trying to nudge my bladder off the bed), so many of the images take some interpreting even with the captions. But the image captioned “gender” (why not “sex”?) is the only one among them with an extra visual aid–a white arrow pointing at said little penis and scrotum.

As I would quip (and I think it probably got pretty tired) when asked if we were going to find out the sex: “Yes. We’ve had enough fucking surprises.” The biggest laugh came from my impossibly sweet, freckled obstetrician who looks like a character from Anne of Green Gables. (As an aside, I really dig this doctor–I let her know right off that this was unplanned, that I’m completely clueless, and that I’m somewhat uncomfortable with sentimentalized baby lore. She explains things well and in frank clinical language and is just generally awesome). When people ask if we’ve thought about names, purchased anything, or otherwise made ANY plans, I’ve generally pushed it off on “well, we’re waiting to find out the sex”–as if this logic can extend beyond naming and onesie-shopping. 

So now we know. I really wanted it to be a boy, am relieved it’s a boy, am really effing stoked it’s a boy. Baby daddy never disclosed a preference, and though I tried to pretend I didn’t feel *too* strongly either way, I was seriously hoping for a boy. But, if the penis and scrotum, unmistakable as it might seem with its little white arrow and all, turns out to be some amniotic anomaly and it’s a girl instead, all will be cool–she’ll just have to love Legos is all I’m saying.