A surprise ruined?

I think I've mentioned in a previous post that when I was pregnant with Kaleb I didn't want to find out whether we were having a boy or a girl. I really wanted it to be a surprise, because I feel like there are so few truly good surprises left in our world. Martin felt the complete opposite way, however, and really wanted to know what we were expecting. I was scheduled for a scan and it ended up being right around the 16 week mark, so we were told we might be able to see if the baby was a boy or a girl.

Being the reasonable and rational person that I am (even though he so didn't deserve it at the time, but that's a whole other post I'm not sure I'm brave enough to write), I agreed that he could learn the sex of the baby as long as he swore on everything holy that he wouldn't ruin the surprise for me. So while we were in the ultrasound room I explained the situation to the US tech, and she admitted she hadn't really dealt with a situation like that--it's usually one or the other, with both parents in agreement.

The tech wasn't sure how to handle it without violating HIPPA, even though I was perfectly fine with it. As the scan progressed, I started wavering, thinking maybe I did want to know right then instead of waiting, and that would make the situation easier too, since the tech wouldn't have to figure out how to break the law without actually having to do so.

Thankfully, Martin convinced the tech that I didn't really want to know, that it was probably my people pleasing side coming out, and I would be remorseful later if I gave into my current curiosity. He was right. There I said it, Martin was right, but he'll never know because he doesn't know this blog exists ;) Anyway. We finally determined the best way to go about the process would be for the tech to write her educated guess (they can never be 100% sure) on a piece of paper, seal it in an envelope, and give it to me to do with as I pleased. She gave me the envelope and Martin grabbed it from me to take with him to work so I wouldn't be tempted to peek.

Martin did amazingly well at keeping the secret from me (which as things turned out shouldn't've been such a big surprise given all the other secrets he was keeping at the time...which is also part of the post I'm not brave enough to write...), and I never had a clue what we were having.

I was a high risk pregnancy because of some past history of DVTs. Pregnancy is a high risk time for any woman to develop a DVT, and my past medical history increased that risk to a dangerous level. So since I was considered high risk I was referred to a perinatologist early in my pregnancy at a high risk clinic, and had pretty frequent appointments. At every appointment the first thing the nurse would do was perform an ultrasound to make sure everything was where it should be. I'm sure you can see where this is going...

So fast forward from that 16 week ultrasound to about seven months into my pregnancy. I was in for one of my normal biweekly appointments, hopped up on the table, let the nurse squeeze the icky gel on my tummy, all the while chatting away with her like I usually did with the nurses there. She started the scan, showed me where my cervix was and how it looked, showed me baby's heartbeat, that he was in the head down position, moved over a bit and said "and there's his little boy parts," and went about her merry way.

I didn't even know what to say. I honestly went through the rest of that appointment in a fog. I didn't know whether to be upset or happy or just plain pissed off. I never mentioned to anyone there what had happened (until a few weeks later) because I didn't want the nurse to feel bad about giving anything away.

I didn't want her to feel bad. See how I am?

When I got out of the office I sent Martin a text telling him what happened. He didn't believe me at first, and thought I was just trying to get out of him what we were having. I then reminded him that I'm the patient, and if I wanted to know all I had to do was ask at any of my appointments. Then he believed me and felt horrible for me because I was really into the idea of our baby being a surprise and for Martin to be the one to tell me in the delivery room.

But I was thrilled we were having a boy, because I've always wanted to be mommy to a little boy, and Kaleb is my dream come true :)

In the weeks following that, we still kept a secret about what we were having from most people. I told my best friend Laura, my mom wanted to know (but my dad didn't which made things really interesting around there for a while--my mom still bought girl clothes to throw my dad off if he looked in bags, we'd refer to the baby alternately as he or she, it got to be kind of a running joke), and Alyssa wanted to know but Anthony didn't, which also made things interesting around our house, and Martin told his mom.

At first I was pretty upset the surprise had been ruined, but now I feel like it just adds to the story and I have one more thing to tell Kaleb when he gets older about his birth story.

Love that boy :)