So...it might be a girl

We had our 20-week ultrasound this afternoon. We'd been prepping "Baby Wes" for days, saying "ok, be sure to smile big, and show us your wee-wee." Because of the Intelligender test, we were fairly confident it would be a boy. After all, the site says the test is 90% accurate in lab tests. (Only 80% accurate in actual usage, but that's because of human error and we followed the directions to a T!) You'll recall how distressed I was when the pee turned green, since I had my heart set on a girl. Over the last two months, though, I've talked to Wesley every day, and looked at boy clothes for him, and even let my quest for neutral bedding veer slightly to the boy side. He was "my little guy," and I got kind of attached to (the idea of) him.

As the day of our "big" ultrasound approached, Matt and I talked about how we would feel if it turned out to be a girl. Matt--though ecstatic about a boy--said he would be totally fine either way. I--despite my earlier desire for a girl--knew that I would feel a little wierd about the gender "changing," even just in our minds.

We told our ultrasound technician about the Intelligender test, so she was looking extra-hard for a penis, too. She checked out all the other organs, took lots of measurements and snapshots (all very cool!) and kept going back to the groin area time and again, each time without announcing any conclusion. Matt and I are both totally untrained, obviously, but each time we got a clear shot of the area, it sure looked like a girl to us. No pee-pees here! Just some white lines in the crotch that looked very much like labia. Finally, she said "well, we can't say for sure, but it really looks like a girl to me." See her crotch, with the little white lines? (Picture baby sitting on the glass of a Xerox machine to get a sense of the angle.)

So, Matt and I don't know what to think! We trusted Intelligender, but it really looked like a girl on screen! Ultrasounds are more reliable, of course, if you see a penis than if you don't, because it could just be hiding (and s/he did keep her/his legs together a lot). We're confused now, since we really want to know "for sure"--we are the Internet generation after all, the age of easy-access information! Right now, I feel kind of how I did when Intelligender said it was a boy. I had trouble picturing myself with a boy, so I couldn't think of the baby as one gender or the other, and didn't know how to talk to him. So, we'll let you know if we start thinking of baby as "her" and "Baby Kate" or not, or if we just live in limbo, like they did in "the olden days." Either way, s/he's a cutie, huh?

In closing, I can't help but think of this gem from "Monty Python and the Meaning of Life"...

Woman who's just given birth: "Is it a boy or a girl?"

Doc: "It's a bit early to be assigning roles, don't you think?"