Details on Ralphette's Ultrasound

(It's okay if you want to skip this post.  It's full of boring details that are probably exactly like every other ultrasound every other person has ever had.)

I was so nervous waiting for the ultrasound technician to call us back.  I mostly dealt with it by talking about anything and everything that came to mind, which I'm sure was fun for Bradley.  But fortunately Jay was right on schedule, so the babbling only lasted eight minutes or so.

Jay was just as abrupt and non-communicative as I remembered from the beginning of Gee's ultrasound.  But when I mentioned the spina bifida in our family, and how he was the one who had discovered it, it was like he was a different person.  He apologized for having had to give us bad news those three years ago, and we chatted about Gee's progress and good health.  After that, he was totally warm and personable.  It's funny, but I remember the same switch when we discovered Gee's spina bifida.  Maybe he does so many ultrasounds, he's a little bored of them.  But anything a little different (not that he looks forward to this or anything dark like that), and he sort of wakes up.  Who knows?

Nearly the first thing he did was take a quick look at the brain.  "I'll just tell you this:  I don't see anything to worry about here.  I'll bet the first sign I had last time was in the brain."  And that is true:  he totally saw something in Gee's brain before we even got to the spine.  The "lemon sign" ("The lemon sign refers to an abnormally shaped fetal head seen at antenatal US performed during the second trimester...a marker for open spina bifida") is apparently quite obvious, and so was the placement of the cerebellum.  So, first deep breath.

Then he went down to Ralphette's spine.  She spent most of the ultrasound curled up in the fetal position (what a surprise, given her essential fetal-ness), and turning her back on us, so while everything else was hard to get at and measure, the spine was exposed in all its well-formed glory.  It got to be a running joke during the scan:  Jay would go to measure something or want a picture of something, and there would be Ralphette's spine again.  It was like she was saying, "Here you go, Momma and Daddy.  Nothing to worry about here!"

Jay counted her little back vertebrae, pointed out several times (because we saw them so often) all the correct placement and colors, and reassured us time and again that there was nothing to be concerned about.  I get a little teary just thinking about it.  I know that anything can happen, but to get over this hurdle has been such a relief.

Because of her contrary nature, Jay had quite the time getting al the other measurements.  He'd work on her arms and hands for a little while, and then she'd pull them back behind her head.  He'd try to get a look at her lips, checking for a cleft, and she'd hide behind her hands.  He'd try to peek between her legs, and she was as modest as any mother of a teenage girl could want.  (Not so much what the mother of the fetus, eagerly awaiting the verdict on girl or boy, wants, but still.)  She'd uncross her legs, but whip that little hand down there to modestly cover all her parts.  I spent most of the ultrasound convinced that we weren't going to get an answer on sex at all.

At one point, Jay thought maybe he'd gotten a glimpse, but it wasn't enough to really tell, so he moved on to the abdomen.  Up till now, he'd mostly referred to the baby as it, although I was shifting between "he" and "she".  At the abdomen, he referred to the baby as "he" twice.  Aha!  I thought to myself.  He saw enough to convince him it's a boy, no big surprise there, and he slipped into using the proper pronoun.  (Later, Bradley told me the same thing had occurred to him.)

But then he came back, and said, "Oh, now I've got you!" and paused the picture.  There was the evidence, although (this being an ultrasound) I didn't really know what I was looking at.  I thought to myself, "Well, um...is that like Em or like the others?  I think it's like Em, I think, I think..."  And then he said, "It's a girl!"  And we cheered.  Throughout the rest of the ultrasound, whenever he'd get a glimpse, he'd show us again.  So, pretty dang 99% sure this one's a girlie.

I am SO excited.  I love love love my boys, but, as Alicia wrote in a comment on the post announcing the sex, "Every little girl needs a sister."  My sisters are so important to me, I love the idea of my Em having a sister, too.

Bradley is thrilled, too.  We are excited to have broken the "Ross Curse" of so few girls, and to almost even up the Tobler side of the family, too (10 boys, 8 girls now).  And all those adorable girl baby clothes...yay!!

The relief (healthy baby!) and the joy (baby girl!) are pretty strong.  I've got a terrible sinus infection, and yet I've been on cloud nine all day.  I feel very blessed and very lucky and very, very happy.