It’s a BOY!

Well, it’s only taken me three weeks to get this post up, but in all fairness we did lose a week of power immediately after our ultrasound and it’s honestly taken me about this long to get caught back up.  For any of you who don’t follow me on Twitter and aren’t friends with me on facebook I sincerely apologize at the delay!

Now, back to April 25th!

At our 12 week appointment we were told that we could schedule our 20 week ultrasound.  At that time we were almost a week late with our appointments (i.e. going almost at 9 wk, 13 wk, etc) and I knew that I didn’t want to wait until I was almost 21 weeks to find out what we were having when I could find out closer to 20 weeks.  So I talked with the scheduler and she scheduled our ultrasound for 3:30 pm on April 25th.

From the beginning I had felt like Baby Max was a boy.  My pregnancy had been totally different (way more sick and tired) with totally different cravings (lots of peanut butter — cookies especially — and salty foods) with only a few aversions (sweet tea) the same in both pregnancies.  So I felt like it was a boy.  Apparently, I had talked it up enough that so did most people who participated in our baby pool because we only had nine out of 35 guesses for a girl.

The day of our ultrasound was, of course, hard to wait through.  I was afraid that they wouldn’t be able to get a 100% definite viewing like with Charlotte and so I made sure to drink a big Sonic Coke and eat one Reese’s egg an hour before my appointment and then took another Reese’s egg to eat in the waiting room just to give baby the extra energy push.  This, of course, meant that by the time I got to the appointment I was basically swimming and was very uncomfortable but baby was definitely moving around so I knew we were bound to see something!

They got us back pretty quickly and we had the same ultrasound tech that we had with Charlotte.  I immediately started chatting and told her that we thought it was a boy and we spent the majority of the ultrasound talking about kids and Alabama football.  I learned later that the chatting annoyed Jason because he just wanted to concentrate but it helped relax me because I knew if she was chatting with me then what she was seeing was probably fine whereas if she wasn’t talking I worry the whole time that my baby had four hands or something like that.

Anyway, so not long after she started she pulled up an image and said, “There you go!”  I had to confirm that what we were looking at was what I thought it was, but it was, and we knew that our baby was a baby James!  It was so nice to get that revelation near the beginning of the ultrasound as opposed to at the end and then being only about 85% sure that Charlotte was a girl.  I think we were both in a little disbelief that we had actually been right and were having a boy, but we were so excited!

Everything looked great in the ultrasound.  She had a little trouble getting one picture of the outgoing pathways from his heart which means I’ll probably get an extra ultrasound at some point (yay!) but that was just because of the way he was positioned.  Speaking of position, James was in the same exact position that Charlotte was at her 20 week ultrasound: fully breech, facing my spine.  When we had C’s ultrasound they told us how unusual this position was for babies but apparently it’s just something to do with how they grow in me!  They tried to tell me that he would most likely turn around before delivery but I told them that I figured he wouldn’t since Charlotte didn’t.  We were planning on another c-section anyway so that will just make that decision even easier!

I loved getting to see pictures of our sweet baby James and especially love that we caught a picture of his sweet profile!  Here are two of the best pictures (minus the revealing one):

We are so excited about having a little boy to add to our family and can’t wait for him to join our family in September!

Our appointment didn’t include a lot of waiting (an OB appointment miracle!) and so we go out early.  We had planned on meeting Mom, Dad, Charlie, and Charlotte for dinner straight from our appointment which would include a call on the way there to Mom telling her the news like we did last time but since we had some extra time I decided that I wanted to surprise them with the news in person!  Jason called his parents on the way home and told them the news and the name and they were, of course, very excited.

When we got to Mom and Dad’s we found the door locked since they weren’t expecting us and it took them a long time to get to the door once we rang the bell.  But when they opened the door they were both standing there with Charlotte in front of them and I said, “Charlotte, you’re having a baby brother!” She had no clue what that meant but everyone else started crying and hugging.  It was very exciting and I’m glad that we got to tell them in person!  We soon started relaying the information out via email, twitter, texts, and phone calls and then headed to C’s favorite Mexican restaurant for a celebration dinner.

Even now, three weeks later, I’m kind of in shock.  We have since bought our first boy outfits (although technically I bought two boy game day outfits heavily on sale in March) and have started collecting things for sweet baby James.  Charlotte will correctly answer “Baby James” when you ask her what her little brother’s name is.  We’ve ordered the crib bedding and James’ crib was delivered last week.  A lot of things are now on a roll to get ready for his arrival but it’s still a little surreal to me.

At this point, I don’t know how to be a little boy’s Mom and I’m a little scared by it!  I’m not a huge outdoors fan and sitting at the ball fields night after night has never been my favorite past time.  But just looking at the picture of James’ profile makes everything ok.  I know that I’ll figure out how to be his Mom just like I figured out how to be Charlotte’s.  I am so excited for the privilege to raise a little boy named James and I can’t wait to meet him in person (even if I do wish he’d stop waking me up at 4 am kicking me!).

And as for his name.  He’s named after two of the most wonderful men we know: both of our dad’s.  His full name will be James Ronald after Jason’s dad (James) and my Dad (Ronald).  He will go by James.  I love that we’re getting to pass on a legacy of our dad’s and I hope that James can learn so much from them over the years.  I also love the sound of Charlotte and James together too so that helps!

We are so excited and I really appreciate all the excitement and congratulations that we’ve gotten since we found out.  Thank you so much!