...So there I lay, waiting to hear what the sonographer was going to say. I realised I was shaking ever so slightly. For days I had obsessed over whether I was at long last going to get my little girl, or whether I was going to forever be the mother of THREE(!) strapping lads. I had suffered bouts of severe insomnia, waking up in the middle of the night and playing out the various reactions I might have to the news either way. And here I was, on the cusp of finally finding out. You could cut the silence in the room it was that thick and heavy.
Then the husband interrupted with, "So have you seen anything which might give you a clue?"
She turned to us and smiled. "As a matter of fact I have!" she chirped brightly.
And with that, I knew. It could only be one thing: a tiny penis waving about between the little ones legs.
And sure enough, seconds later, there it was, visible to all: my little baby boy.
I was rendered speechless. In those seconds which followed, I found my head full of a million thoughts and feelings. Content in the knowledge that it was by all accounts a healthy, perfectly formed baby, I watched as the internal movie in my head played out:
(Two little babies - one a girl and one a boy...the girl baby smiled and suddenly POP went the cartoon bubble surrounding her and she disappeared in a plume of smoke. I was left with a chubby little male cherub smiling broadly at me, who got bigger and bigger and took over my whole headspace. But then he started to grow, and I saw Egg and Dumps enter from corner stage and they were all teenagers and they were all HUGE and they were tearing food out of cupboards and stuffing their faces and dumping loads of laundry on the kitchen floor and being so LOUD and trekking in mud everywhere and....and...)
"You okay?" the husband asked kindly, rubbing my arm and shaking me out of my reverie.
At once I was back in the hospital, staring soberly at the screen. But I ignored him for the moment and addressed the sonographer one last time.
"Are you sure it's a boy? I mean are you 80% or 90% sure?" I asked.
She grinned her happy, healthy Kiwi grin, swinging her luscious blond locks over her shoulder and winked knowingly, "I am 99% sure...look!"
And there is was. That little penis, up there on the screen. My future...in black and white, practically waving at me.
Spun out doesn't even cover it. I had secretly 99% believed it was going to be a girl. I 'knew it' deep inside and even had her full name picked out.
Going to be a crazy few weeks mentally and emotionally as I get my head around not just the fact that I was so, so wrong, but that I am soon to be the mother of three(!) boys.
I'm not even one of those hearty, sporty women with ruddy cheeks who I imagine whip up weekend hog roasts for their big sons and all their mates. I'm already drowning in a sea of dirty laundry, spills and stains, and I can guarantee that every single toilet in this house, is right now, as we speak, decorated in a sea of urine.
The husband is of course taking the news much more in stride. Already over the shock, he is now amusing himself by thinking up potential boy names, and looking at me quizzically out of the corner of his eye, wondering if I'm going to hold up or lose the plot.
I suppose my biggest worry right now is making sure the poor little guy doesn't get named something ridiculous like 'Barabbas' or 'Hallellujah' - the strong contender at the moment.
And giving away the cute little girl outfit I purchased ages ago, which was simply too darling to resist (sigh)...
My mother was one of 8 girls. All those sisters who had kids before her had girls. Mom had eight boys and only 1 girl. She hadn't a clue - she said she had vaguely been brought up thinking boys were nasty. But she was an awesome mother. She told me way after I was grown, "Nobody will ever known how often I was faking it!" Mothers of boys tend to learn that any day where everyone is still alive at evening is a great day. I actually often can tell with older women if they've had more than one son by a certain element in their life views of not 'sweating the small stuff'. I think that girls pack more pure hell into the 3 years from 11 to 13 than boys manage in 21 years. You will be so happy with those boys when they outgrow the teen years. Alas, that is a way down the road, but hang in there. Boys end up adoring their moms if said moms are even a little bit sane (but, of course, they do everything possible in the first 20 years to overset that sanity...). And they can lift you when you you get to old to get up by yourself.
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