"it's a baby...GIRL!", "I'm sorry, did you just say "girl?"

Five weeks ago my doctor scheduled my mid-pregnancy ultrasound and I felt like I was going to have to wait an eternity to see our child again. The five weeks flew by though because we kept ourselves busy at work and with the house and before I knew it, it was the Sunday night before my appointment.

All of a sudden I was terrified of going to the doctor. I was nervous something was wrong or maybe nothing was wrong but I'd really have to see it again and it'd all be so very real all over again.

That night I had a dream that Paul and I decided that our 1:00 appointment was not convenient and so we skipped it. We skipped our ultrasound. THE ultrasound. We instead decided to show up at 4:45, unannounced, to which my doctor showed her great disgust and told me I couldn't be pregnant anymore. That was that.

I woke up Monday morning and planned my entire day around that 1:00 appointment. I couldn't miss it, we couldn't be late. We couldn't not be pregnant anymore, that wasn't an option. Yes, we'd still go to the 1:00.

I felt ridiculous all morning. It was all I could think about. I wasn't even remotely concerned about the sex of the baby, but I couldn't figure out what it was I was nervous about. I was sweating like a pig and drinking water like I was dying of thirst. I kept telling myself over and over again that my bladder had to be full and so I'd down 20 ounces of water only to have to pee oh, 5 minutes later. I did this all morning. Water, bathroom, water, bathroom, snack, water, bathroom. And the sweat. I was still sweating. So bad that I pulled my extra deodorant out of my desk drawer, hid in the corner of the finish library and reapplied it TWICE.

I gave Paul a last minute call and asked him to bring me a sweater and a brush because I was a mess with pit stains and my doctor was going to think I had lost it.

The ultrasound tech got us in and we got started and then I cried. I cried and I cried. The baby was there and perfect and the nose was the right length, there were two arms and two legs, I saw it's bones and it's heart beating with all four chambers. I saw it's spine flexing and moving and I watched it kick me with it's ridiculously long legs and watched it pull and play with the cord. I cried some more. It was the coolest thing I had ever seen. No, seriously, you don't understand, even if you've seen it, you don't understand. It was just unbelievably cool. 

No really, stop pretending like you understand. You've just never seen anything as cool as Paul and I did Monday afternoon.

[I've been looking for a YouTube video all morning of Jim and Ryan (from The Office) talking about New York City. Ryan keeps telling Jim how awesome it is to live in the City and to be there and to be surrounded by everything going on. Jim keeps saying how much he loves visiting and how he agrees that it is an awesome place but Ryan keeps telling him he just doesn't understand even though he totally did. Yea, if I had found that video, it's clip would have been right here.]

Well, everything was perfect. Absolutely perfect.

And then we found out we were having a baby...girl. Cue the "are you sure?" questions. We were thrilled about it being a girl, but we sort of had a feeling it was a boy. Everyone did. Everyone I talked to (besides my mom) thought it was a boy and I'd sort of nestled into that mind set too. Again, we knew we'd be thrilled either way but we we're sort of in shock. She checked and checked again but there was nothing there. Well there was stuff there, just not the boy parts.

The rest of the day was strange and was a very out of body experience for me. I could now call it a she. I could refer to her by her name if I wanted to. I knew what direction to start taking the nursery. It just got weird.

We bought some stuff while we were out and about running around all of Oklahoma yesterday and it started to make everything more real. Pink tights with a dress with little owls all over it and little gray shoes will make it more real. Here's hoping my shopping bug stays on the down low for a while.