It's a Girl!

This year my birthday fell on Thanksgiving week (which meant a short work week for me) AND the week we got to find out the gender of our baby! The much anticipated ultrasound was on Wednesday afternoon (Nov. 21). I was supposed to have a half-day of school... until I threw up in my car on the way there... so 7:30AM I had to call in for a last-minute sub and drive myself back home and crawl into bed. It was the 24-hr flu. Ugh. But I was bound and determined to get to that ultrasound by 2:00PM because it would be another month wait if we had to reschedule. So I slept all day and tried to keep down as much fluid as possible, which wasn't much. Zach came home around 1:30 and we decided to just go for it. I almost made it. Not really. I puked in a bucket as we pulled into the parking lot of the hospital. But then I felt better so we went in anyway.... that was probably a huge no-no: going into a hospital while sick with the flu but, oh well. We did and its over. And we got to see the Little Cookie in there!!!

20 weeks

The ultrasound room was stinkin' HOT and we were in there for 45 minutes but we got to see the baby again! We asked the ultrasound tech not to drop any gender hints if she could tell what it was because we wanted her to write it down on a notecard we brought. She took a ton of pics and another tech came in and took more and they both agreed on the gender so they wrote it down and sealed the envelope. Baby didn't really cooperate until the very end -- all curled up and facing away from the camera then finally turned a little to let us see the profile a bit. But the chin was tucked down on it's belly so all we could see was the eyes and nose and barely the upper lip. Also, they both agreed NOT to change the due date based on the measurements and whatever else they look at. April 10th it is. They sent us home with a sealed envelope and a CD of pictures - that we couldn't look at until Sunday!!!

camera shy

All curled up with the chin on the belly

After my bout with the flu, the next day was Thanksgiving and we drove to Farmington Hills for Thorne Thanksgiving. Not much food cramming for this girl since my stomach was still recovering from the day before. The cool thing about Thanksgiving was that Zach got to feel the baby move for the first time! He's been wanting to feel it SO BAD and he finally got to! I still wasn't even feeling it much until that week. Anyway, one of those milestones that made me smile - just to see the look on his face!

 Zach went out at midnight on Black Friday with my brothers. They went to the Twelve Oaks Mall -- I think they're crazy!!! Then they got up early the following morning and went out again! I slept in. :) Later that morning we spent time with my grandparents in Westland.

On the way home, we took that sealed envelope with baby's gender written down and stopped at Babies R Us. We picked out a boy and girl outfit then we asked the cashier to open the envelope and wrap up the outfit that matched what the notecard said. We paid with cash and had him put the change and receipt back into the envelope then we went and walked around the store. After wandering through the super long aisles of strollers, car seats, and baby monitors we went back up to the register and took our wrapped up package home. So from Friday night until Sunday afternoon, we had a present all wrapped up waiting to be opened!!!

Somehow we waited until Sunday afternoon. With both our families standing around (and a few on Skype!), we opened it up with lots of screaming and saw the outfit was pink! There were a few tears shed all around. My mom just loves babies so she didn't care what it was. Zach's mom, the mom of two boys, was really hoping for a girl and she got her wish! The second wish to come true would be for her to be born on her birthday, April 6. We'll have to wait at and see! (You can check out the reveal video on Facebook.)

It's a girl!

I'm just glad I can stop calling the baby "it!" There's a "SHE" in there! :) And she's been quite active the past few weeks so I've felt her a lot and Zach has too. We're at 22 weeks this week: slightly over halfway there. 40 weeks is full term. Wow. My belly's got a lot of stretching to do before then! And we're got a lot of stuff to do & buy and books to read!

Love,

Sarah