As I announced on the blog in early July, my wife and I are expecting twins. Of course, being the impatient types that we are, we couldn’t wait until January to find out the gender of said twins. Oh sure, we had all kinds of “rational” reasons for finding out early – it settles the issue of names, we can start decorating the nursery, it eliminates the temptation to gamble on the sex, etc, etc. But the real reason was simple – we just don’t do well waiting for information. I blame Facebook. I’m not sure why, but it’s got to be part of the issue.
Usually, the gender of an unborn child is determined at the “20 week ultrasound”. As its name implies, this is the ultrasound that occurs 20 weeks into the pregnancy, and for most people, this is the first ultrasound that is performed. However, when you combine IVF with multiples, you enter into a category that the OB/GYN folks like to call “You Get Lots and Lots of Pictures Taken of the Inside of Your Wife’s Uterus”.
Two weeks ago, we had an appointment for an ultrasound, and there was a slight chance that the doctor would be able to see the gender at that time. Of course, the doc was far more concerned with measuring heartbeats and making sure the babies looked healthy, and wasn’t able to see the gender (as she put it “Unless they wave it in my face, I’m not going to spend time trying to find it.” Fortunately, Carrie had made an appointment for the following day with a place in Naperville that specializes in “extra” ultrasounds (it’s also one of those places where you can get a creepy 3-D ultrasound done).
After trying to sell us on some type of a teddy bear that had a microchipped recording of the baby’s heartbeat installed (we declined), the ultrasound techs went to work on looking for unborn genitialia. And almost immediately, they saw that Baby A was, as Luca Bratzi would say, “a masculine child”. This was somewhat reassuring, as we only had one girl name, so now we knew that there was no way we’d have two girls. Not that we wouldn’t have liked two girls…but it would have required thinking of a second name. And in addition to being impatient, we are also lazy.
After taking various snapshots of Baby A (and Carrie still being unable to see the “evidence” of boyhood), they moved on to Baby B. And lo and behold…it’s another boy.
Carrie had a bit of a meltdown on the ultrasound table (more from shock than anything else), and she said something that, taken out of context, would sound dirty (I won’t post it on the blog). All shock and awe has since passed, and we couldn’t be more excited about the future addition of two little (loud, dirty, and prone to breaking things) boys to our family.
Here are the ultrasound pictures. I had to give them the “Perez Hilton” treatment for the benefit of my mother, who had no idea what she was looking at the first time I sent them to her:
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Baby A, in repose
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Baby A - proof of manliness
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Baby B - showing off the boyhood
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Baby B - reclining
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So now that we know they are boys, we are set for names – Henry Phillip and Joseph Steven. We’re also going to decorate their nursery in a vintage baseball theme. We’ve requested bids on Etsy for a custom Wrigley Field sign that will read “Welcome to Wrigley Field – Home of Henry & Joey”. So, yes, I am going to be setting them up for a lifetime of heartache as Cubs fans. Please don’t judge me for this.
We surprised Carrie’s family with the news by inviting them over to dinner, and having two cakes for dessert – one labeled “Baby A” and the other “Baby B” – the idea being, the color of the cake once you cut into it would reveal the genders (of course, both cakes were blue inside).
And now…we wait. There’s still many months to go before Henry and Joey come to meet us, and there’s a lot of work still to do (we did register at three stores last weekend, which was exhausting, but I’m glad it is done) and we’re trying like mad to squeeze in all the things we know we won’t be able to do once we have kids running around. But another milestone has passed and it’s getting more and more exciting. It almost feels more “real” now that I know they are boys – I can imagine them better and visualize more realistically what it will be like once they live with us.
It’s going to rule.