You got it.
Keep in mind, the techs aren’t always right! My ultrasound showed a girl - for sure. A few months later, there was my son. 
How timely: my wife is good friends with an ultrasound tech (or whatever, I’m not really clear on what she is), and this afternoon we’re sneaking into her office after hours so she can attempt to tell the gender of our gestating youngling. And when we find out, we’re going to do our damnedest to keep it from everyone we know until Saturday, when the big family can get together for Thanksgiving.
I suspect, though, that my wife will “slip” and let her mother or sister know before then.
I don’t know if we’ll find out or not when the time comes, but one of the biggest reasons I’d want to know is I would want to be able to call the baby by name, rather than just “the baby.” But maybe some people don’t pick a final name until the baby is arrived?
My wife and I opted to find out. It was still a surprise at the time and gave me several months to prepare to be the father of a daughter. I think we both felt more connected to her, knowing it was a she and being able to refer to her by her name.
It also simplified buying clothes, decorating, and eliminated the whole question of to circumcise or not. I was a little worried about the the ultrasound being wrong, but even I could see the girl parts pretty clearly and we ended up having a quick ultrasound for another matter at 36 weeks that confirmed it.
I really don’t understand the couple comments about it being the only thing to look forward to at the birth. So otherwise on the big day you would have been like, “There he/she is, just like expected. Meh…” ?
I don’t have any kids, but this is exactly my thinking on the subject. There are very few truly good surprises in life. Or I’ve seen too many movies with the magical “It’s a girl/boy!” moments. 
On the other hand, I’m Instant Gratification Girl, and I also like the Christmas Envelope idea.
Most of my friends with children narrowed their choices down before birth, but waited until they had actually “met” their babies before deciding on a name. Every single person I’ve known in the last ten years who has made an absolute final decision on their baby’s name before birth ended up with a child of the opposite gender. 
My second daughter arrived a month early and we still didn’t have a name picked out. Had some in mind but I didn’t decide on her name until she was about three days old. I couldn’t decided whether I wanted her first name as her middle or vice versa - finally came down to which way looked better when I wrote it. Luckily it “fits” her.
Well, frankly…yes. Admittedly, I was a little slow with the maternal instinct.
I was convinced Kid Kalhoun was a girl until he was born. And I caught myself calling him “the baby” just a few years ago. His 30th birthday is today. :eek: I still call my 13-year-old niece “the baby.” Sometimes we say it as if it’s a proper name: “Hi, The Baby!” or “No, The Baby! You may not eat dessert before dinner.”
Heh. We still call our daughter “the baby” and she’s 8 years old.
I wanted to know ahead of time with both of mine. When I had the ultrasound of my son (who will be 16 and driving next month, gods help us all) the tech was positive very quickly that he was a boy. The girl, on the other hand…I had two ultrasounds a couple of months apart and all we could determine was that she was ornery, as she absolutely refused to move into a position where the tech could see what kind of plumbing she had.
Thinking back, my son is very lucky he was born a boy. I was only 16 and couldn’t decide between Mercedes or Destinee for a girl’s name. Fortunately for my daughter I had outgrown that by the time she was born, and managed to not give her a name that would make her sound like a rejected Bratz doll. (Instead, she shares a name with an ACCEPTED Bratz doll :smack: , but at least we spell it correctly.)
Good gods. It just occurred to me that my son is reaching the same age I was when I had him.
Wow. When the hell did that happen?!
I may need a beer.
No kids here, but my mother thinks it’s cheating to find out. Personally, I think that’s because she didn’t know with either of us. They weren’t doing routine ultrasounds when she was pregnant with me, and with my brother, she only had one earlyish on to make sure everything was okay – it was the Air Force medical system, I guess they weren’t doing “let’s find out!” ultrasounds yet.
From an older sister’s perspective (I’ve got eight years on him!), I must say that while we were waiting for my brother to arrive, I was hoping for a sister. However, if I’d known, I think I’d have gone through months of “I wanted a sister!” and being pissed off about it before meeting him and (I’m assuming) changing my mind. As it was, I heard it was a boy and met him within a few hours and don’t remember being disappointed except for a moment. He was just too damn cute to be unhappy about.
Now he’s 22. Oy vey, my baby brother is LEGAL!
If I may make a suggestion: This datum would be an excellent topic of discussion when he brings his prom date home to meet you.
At the risk of being depressing–just be happy that the biggest thing to agonize over revealed by the ultrasound was the sex.
A friend of mine is pregnant with a baby who may not make it to term, and will not live long after he is born. She was telling her story recently, and I was just struck by the degree to which it sounded like “So I bopped off to have the ultrasound and I was desparate to know if it was a boy or a girl, and they didn’t say anything, but they told me I needed to go to the high risk ultrasound place, which was such a pain in the neck (especially given the need to arrange child care for big brother one and big brother two) and by the time they told me what was going on I’d figured out something horrible was wrong because no one would look at me or talk to me”
Incidently, speaking of reactions from older siblings–big brother 1 (age 5) understands that baby will not becoming home to live with them, but rather will go live in heaven with God–Where does God live? is is frequent question. Big brother 2, age 3, doesn’t get it. He’s just thrilled by the baby in Mommy’s tummy. (Mommy doesn’t think he understands that if baby was healthy baby would come home to live with them.)
Believe me, I understand completely that I am lucky that the ultrasound was normal. Due to my age, I have a high risk of chromosomal abnormalities, most of which are not detectable on a regular ultrasound (such as Down Syndrome). We have chosen not to have any further testing, such as an amnio, since we intend to go to term regardless. But believe me, I think about the possibilities all the time, and am just praying that everything continues to go well. The fact that the ultrasound was normal makes me feel a little less worried, but the possibilities are definitely at the back of my mind. In fact, I was pretty nervous before the ultrasound that they would find something that didn’t look right.
I am so, so sorry for your friend.
With our first child, we didn’t want to know and were thrilled when we had a girl.
The second time around, we didn’t want to know. Until we found out we were having twins. At that point we decided we’d had all the surprises we wanted, so we told them to tell us EVERYTHING.
I had an early ultrasound with this pregnancy, as well as this 20-week one, because I have had a couple of miscarriages. After that one my husband asked me about 3 times if they were SURE it wasn’t twins. I think the thought of that made him more nervous than anything! (I was kind of hoping for twins, myself! )
When I was pregnant with my second child we had a regular ultrasound that was suggestive of chromosomal problems or of Cystic Fibrosis (echogenic “bright” bowel). Gladly, everything ended up being fine.
Like you, we were committed to going to term. However, we felt the testing was useful because as we waited for amino and other results we read and prepared for a negative outcome. As a result, by the time the results came in we felt prepared to welcome a Down’s child or a child with CF.
Whether to test or not is a totally personal choice and I don’t judge anyone who makes a different choice than we made. I just wanted to say that the only options are: 1. not to test or, 2. go to term anyway, so don’t test. Sometimes testing and getting the results allows you to mourn, and then prepare by the time the birth happens.
Please do not see this as a critcism, just a perspective from someone who’s been there and decided to test even though we were committed to go to term.
However, I know your baby will be happy and healthy!
Thanks for the good word! I don’t take it as a criticism…everyone has to decide for themselves whether they want to know about any potential problems or not. We just decided the amnio wasn’t worth the risk to us. Interestingly, a friend of mine, who is the same age as me & also pregnant DID have the amnio, and had a complication with it. Somehow the amniotic sac was torn, and she has been leaking fluid. HOPEFULLY everything will turn out OK, and she will be able to stretch out the pregnancy long enough to not have a severe premie, but it is not a good situation. So, we were glad that we didn’t do it. Of course, the chances of that happening are incredibly remote, but we just decided under the circumstances that we didn’t want to take the risk.
Careful for what you wish for. China Guy, father of twins soon to be 2. Definately a blessing but you have no idea what you could have been in for.
Incidently, in the case of my friend–with pregnancy 1, they mentioned a risk of something and wanted to do amnio"in the next two weeks"-- and Daddy said no. Given that they were committed to having the baby no matter what the health problems were, he didn’t want to take a 0.5% risk of miscarriage to find out for sure about a 3% chance of some significant but survivable (and fairly common) birth defect. [note: I’m not being coy–I can’t remember what she said they thought they saw signs of during the first ultrasound].
With this pregnancy, once they were sure something was seriously wrong, the doctor wanted to do amnio and Mommy said yes–and braced herself for a fight with her husband (at home caring for the kids). But when he got there, he agreed to the amnio–I think the fact that they knew baby wasn’t healthy and it was just a matter of trying to figure out what exactly is wrong rather than testing for something at a fairly low risk that made a difference.
I’m not sure that the amnio has actually allowed them to determine quite what’s wrong–the doctors don’t seem to quite agree, but it has given them more information–especially useful given that this is not expected to be their last pregnancy.