The scan

It's been a hectic week. I started on Monday at my hospital and was introduced to my ward and consultant. After a quick orientation was thrown into the deep end (with a life preserver) and left to swim. Which is actually fabulous because although I feel like I'm seconds away from drowning a fair bit of the time I am learning SO much. It's really good. I am also gratified that I have heard back from supervisors that my consultant is pleased. So I am hopeful of a good end of term report. I have more patients than any of the other interns and I'm doing OK at juggling them, though I still feel really rusty. Like I am speaking a foreign language that I'm just not fluent in.

Today was also exciting because it was the day of The Scan. The Big Scan. The Scan Where We Check If Your Baby Is Healthy And Whether It Has Ovaries. I was not particularly nervous about this scan because our 13 week scan was so good. There are some things you can see now that you couldn't see then, but the *really* bad things, the unviable things like no kidneys, no brain, unformed spine, severe omphalocoele etc were all ruled out then. Plus I've been feeling the sleepy koala occasionally kicking me every day so I knew there was a heart beating in there. It's amazing how much easier it is to cope when you know that.

Today was not exciting though in that I have started to actually feel tired. Physically tired and big, even though I'm not really huge. I think it's being on my feet all day and being a little bit clumsy and of course, having a 30cm foetus taking up half my abdomen. Oh and all that extra blood volume etc. So from that perspective, lying on a hardish flat table for an hour or so didn't thrill me.

But we were going to find out today if we were going to have 3 princesses or to finally give Bingley the son he's always wanted. And any discomfort and fear was completely worth it for that alone. I have been tossing up for weeks what I wanted more. Another girl or a baby boy? Another delicious pink bundle that will toddle around in teensy dresses and snuggle into soft pink handknits? A little boy with dark brown eyes and masses of black brown hair to snuggle in to me.

At times I was convinced boy. My skin has been so clear - but I've been faithful to ye olde maintenance rituals so it could easily be explained by that. This baby is heaps quieter than either the Elfling or the Monkey (hence Koala) and I've stopped throwing up every day and I'm only 20 weeks. So makes sense to be a boy.

Others I convinced myself I was only kidding myself about a boy through sheer want. I've been at least as sick as I was with the Elfling, if not more. I've had no definite feelings of having a boy even though I was definite that both the Elfling and Monkey were girls. I was clumsy in all 3 pregnancies and I'm still carrying compactly and am able to live a pretty normal life. And to top all that off the idea of 3 girls actually really appeals to me. In fact, truth be told I think I wanted a girl more. But Bingley wanted a boy so much. As much as I ever wanted girls. And I hoped for his sake it would be.

So we went to the scan taking the Elfling (first mistake - scans are long and often running late, almost 5 year olds in my experience do not have the attention scan). One of the first questions the sonographer asked was "do you want to know" and the answer was a definite yes. I wanted to know. So we started the scan with the helpful sonographer telling us "that's the head" and "that's the leg" etc and explaining/apologising a little when we couldn't get a great traditional profile shot because of where and how the baby was lying. At this point the Elfling asked what the probe was and Bingley started explaining the principles of ultrasound technology. In detail. Boring nerd like detail that only someone with an engineering degree can replicate. lol.

The sonographer perked up at that point and mentioned that not many people seem to understand ultrasound and asked what Bingley does for a living. He laughed and said he was an Engineer. The Elfling then piped up and said "and Mummy is a DOCTOR". At which point we started getting shown things like the "bi parietal diameter" instead of the "head". We then swooped over my belly with the warmed gel and started probing for the goods.

The sonographer checked again whether we really wanted to know the sex, but by that point it was quite arbitrary. "Have you got a boy's name picked out" she asked, and tears rolled down my cheeks. The good kind. I felt a little bit strange as we checked out his scrotum and penis (he is most definitely a boy), an overwhelming protectiveness for my little baby boy as he kicked my belly hard. But after confirming that everything looked normal we soon swooped back to checking internal organs and doppler velocity gradients of outflow tracts.

I don't remeber much else except seeing the maternal foetal medicine specialist who remembered me as an "exceptional" student and congratulated me on my healthy baby boy,

Cue more tears.