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Baby stats:
Percentage of people in the world who are female: 52%
Percentage of ultrasounds that correctly predict the baby's gender: 97%
Percentage of mom's who correctly predict their baby's gender: 71%
Percentage of people who have warned us not to trust the ultrasound, but believed Aimee's prediction of a boy: 65%
Developed this week: Baby's getting bigger all the time. This week our girl tops the scales at a full pound!
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Kevin's thoughts:
It's a GIRL! I mean, SHE'S a girl! I've finally got my pronoun... Yippee!
She she she. It's nice. Rolls off the tongue. Now if I can just get used to using it in public. I'm so
used to being furtive about the gender, since the second I accidentally throw out a he or she, some clever
bugger picks up on it, "OH so it's a BOY/GIRL is it?" Unfortunately, it's those same clever buggers who
now hear me say the infinitive 'it' and interrupt with "Ha, you mean SHE!" Can't win with a clever bugger.
I don't even try anymore.
It's stranger than I thought knowing the gender. Not bad-strange, just Aimee-has-a-baby-in-her-tummy-which-will-one-day-grow-into-a-really-real-PERSON strange.
I'm assuming by not finding out the sex, that moment of realness doesn't shake the average bloke until the
mad drive to the hospital at the end of month nine. But for me, I've got it now. It's not a baby, it's a
GIRL.
Babies are really more like dolls, and guys don't have much experience with dolls, unless they're
Action Figures. But girls, on the other hand, are two-year-old girls sleeping in a stroller at the
park, or five-year-old girls at the mall screaming that they want a Kit Kat, or eight-year-old girls who
go to Brownies and think everything is 'Wicked!', or 12-year-old girls who write morbid poetry and think
everything is 'lame.' Now that I've got a gender, I can extrapolate, compare, assemble and predict what
I'd like my little girl to turn out, as well as how I hope she doesn't.
We were told by a few that finding out the gender of our baby would bring a measure of disappointment.
implying that we might not like what we find out. That's impossible: people who find out the sex are just
as happy either way as someone who doesn't find out until the delivery room. It just so happens that I've
got 20 weeks of excitement about my daughter-to-be, instead of 20 more weeks of excitement for my baby-to-be.
However, I should add that there is a measure of disappointment that comes in another form, one that I never anticipated.
Before you know the gender, you can flip back and forth between boy and girl as the occassion suits.
Imagine the life of your little baby... a little baby boy, isn't he adorable, change his little
diaper and he pees in your face. Oops, a little girl is better. Aww, isn't she adorable.
Jump forward four years. My little girl can walk and talk and go to school. Happy happy happy, then
she asks, Dad, will you play Barbies with me? I think to myself, who the hell bought you Barbies?
Must have been your mother. But, if you were a boy... aha, let's play He-Man. Bingo, you're
a boy now.
It's nice to jump back and forth between sexes when creating future memories. Watch a movie starring a
misbehaving teenage girl, you can pretend yours is a boy. Then see a show starring a little girl who
loves her daddy more than anything else in the whole wide world, and zap, you can pretend you're having
a girl. In your mind, you can live in two universes, one with an idealised version of your son and one with
an idealised version of your daughter, and you can switch back and forth to your heart's content... until the day you know.
The thing is, now I know I'm having a girl. The boy-universe and all of its boy-memories have vanished,
leaving me with only the girl-universe. I have to say this delicately, because I don't want anyone for the
slightest moment that I'm disappointed by the answer. I suppose the best way to put it is that I'm both
thrilled and frightened by the future memories I have left, and for the same reasons I'm both saddened
and relieved by the ones I've lost.
Does that make sense? I'm ecstatic that I'm getting a girl, but at the same time, upset that I'm losing
the boy. It's a glass-half-full glass-half-empty situation. Luckily, I'm a glass-half-full kinda guy.
Interestingly enough, this unexpected divergence of emotion actually fortifies my reasoning for finding
out in week 20. I have to assume this sort of thought pattern happens to more people than just me, whether
you find out before or after, and I'd rather lose one universe now and dream entirely of the other
one, than have to purge memories of the opposite with a real live baby in front of me, whatever the outcome.
I say this now, but knowing us we'll end up having a boy and I'll sadly have to purge the girl universe
I've have been building for five months to start again from scratch. I guess in philosophical terms,
I can look at that as downing the half-full glass in one big gulp, and heading back up for a refill!
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Aimee's thoughts:
Whew. Our little girl just got the best report card ever! All my worries were for naught
(as most worries usually are!) and we've learned that the baby is low risk for everything... except
cuteness! Definite high risk for cuteness. 1 in 2 chance actually! (I just have to upload this site
before Kevin can change that!)
I really have to stop doing worrying. I know all moms do it (okay, some more than others), and I'm not
usually prone to worrying, but being pregnant I guess I can chalk up crazy worries to hormones. You know what
else I can chalk up to hormones? Being overly excited about my daughter's test results! Yay!
In fact, being pregnant, I can just about chalk up everything to hormones! I get mad at work?
probably hormones. Kitchen not clean? Hormones! Badly written week 21 writeup? That's hormones
too! This hormone thing has the makings of a good article, so I'd better not waste it when my
bad writing hormones are in full force!
Anyway, you don't care about my hormones this week, you care about our little girl!
Here's how she fared in her Mid-term Exam of Pre-Life:
Biparietal diameter: 50.0 mm
Head circumference: 182.0 mm
Abdominal circumference: 149.0 mm
Femur length: 33.0 mm
Estimated weight: 345 g
Heart action present. Fetal movements visible. Presentation cephalic. Amniotic Fluid: normal. Cord: three vessel cord.
Placenta: Anterior Low
Heart: 4-chamber view normal
The following were visualised and appear normal:
Head, brain, face, spine, neck, skin, chest, abdominal wall, gastro-intestinal tract, kidneys, bladder, extremities, skeleton.
Summary: No obvious signs of fetal anomaly were observed
See? Now that's the kind of report card you want to have when you're a mere 20 weeks away from being
born! See ya later!
Huh? Whazza? You want to see scan pictures? What are you talking about? Oh, you mean THESE scan pictures?
There you go. I hope you weren't expecting any PROOF of femininity (or at this point, lack of proof
of masculinity, since that's about the best a scan can do). We're not that kind of website. You want
to see vaginas, I'm sure there are plenty of other websites you can visit. This is my daughter we're
talking about!
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Did you know? |
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Our little girl is sleeping in regular intervals now, just like a newborn. She wakes up a
little in the morning, but then stays pretty quiet throughout the day - unless I'm in a stressful meeting,
then she wakes up again to show her disapproval!
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Preggy Pal of the Week! |
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Angie and James
I'm at 14 weeks, and the baby is due 24th January, 2007.
No.
Don't know, and not going to find out.
Hot chocolate, eggs and cheese. Recently, I've had cornetto ice cream
and Herta frankfurter hotdog cravings.
Most memorable moment was our first scan. No embarrassing moments,
... yet!
Aimee gave me the best advice: drink water before you vomit in the morning. Advice to pass on... If you thought you loved food before, wait till you're pregnant, it smells and tastes
better than ever!
They dont half nick a lot of blood from you at the antenatal clinic... no wonder so many pregnant women are anaemic,
it's cos they've run out of blood!!!
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Aimee's cravings |
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 I love Kraft singles. There. I've said it. This is almost as embarrassing as McDonald's fries. Especially when I eat them as they are, forget the
crackers! It's a wonder I haven't gained 30 pounds.
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Everyone into the poll! |
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We've been hearing a lot this week about the inaccuracy of modern technology in determining the gender of babies.
Parents being duped into decorating the nursery blue when it really should have been pink, that sort of thing.
Has this happened to you? How did you react?
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Baby's Book of the Week |
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 Our Twitchy
By Kes Gray & Mary McQuillan
I love this book. Love it. It's about the cutest little bunny who discovers he's adopted and tries to
convince his parents that he can become just like them. His parents are a cow and a horse, by the way.
Absolute genius - it made us laugh out loud and almost made us cry. Well, almost made me cry.
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