Pink or Blue? Part 2

I know that you’re all anxious to hear whether or not Baby H. is pink or blue—but first, the saga. It has been quite a day, to say the least. At 8:45 a.m., Chris ditched work and came by and picked me up from my office. I was very nervous the entire drive to the doctor’s office. I had an unsettling feeling that something was going to go wrong. Sure enough, when I signed in, they had scheduled me for the wrong test. No ultrasound. And the sonography technician was booked solid. I raised hell. They asked if we could come in tomorrow. I said no—we had work and condo moving conflicts. Chris couldn’t get off work a second time, and besides, the only available times they had were on Wednesday and Friday. Well, we’re moving on Wednesday and the condo settlement is on Friday. By the time I finished explaining all this to the vapid creature in front of me, I was in tears. I still had my regular appointment with my doctor, so I explained the situation to her. We had to have this done today. She was really cool about it and went pulled some strings. A couple minutes later, we had an appointment at a fetal medicine clinic in Silver Spring at 3:00. Chris and I said we’d take it and back to work we went. Unfortunately Chris had an important meeting (that he was supposed to lead) at 2:00—right about when he’d need to leave work to come pick me up. (Again.) I agreed to take metro down to Friendship Heights and meet him at the car to allow him enough time to get the meeting started. Back at work I rushed rushed rushed to meet today’s deadlines then literally ran out the door to the metro. As I came out of the station in Friendship Heights, I had a voicemail: The fetal medicine clinic wanted to reschedule my appointment for 3:15 in the Rockville location. Rockville was further away, but I didn’t care. As long as my ultrasound was still on, I was still happy. I found Chris and we raced to Rockville. Finally in the waiting room with the sonogram imminent, I started to relax—and even got excited. As if my little one could detect his or her big show, he/she started doing big summersaults and kicks. Such a showoff. Into the sonogram room we went. And then Chris and I discovered that perhaps the morning snafu was a blessing. After all, because we were at a clinic specializing in fetal medicine, they were extremely sophisticated (Chris loved the big flat screens) and the technician extraordinarily thorough. We then met with the doctor who “owned” the practice, and he went through everything with us in another sonogram—the lobes of the brain, chambers of the heart, even the arch of the foot. Everything looked perfect. He mentioned that it was nice to work with a case that had a healthy mother (that’s me!) and healthy baby because all he usually sees were difficult, problematic cases. We then saw a 3D sonogram where our baby was sucking and playing with its thumb. Then the doctor confirmed it. We’re having a little girl.