What are little boys made of?
What are little boys made of?
Slugs and snails
And puppy-dogs' tails,
That's what little boys are made of.
What are little girls made of?
What are little girls made of?
Sugar and spice
And everything nice,
That's what little girls are made of.
 |
| Me at 15 weeks |
Now when people ask Kevin and I what we want - our answers are always the same. Me - a happy and healthy baby; we've waited too long to care. And while Kevin will agree, he really wants a girl. If you've never met any of the extended Banes bunch - it's all boys. A virtual smorgasbord of testosterone. On the Banes side, Kevin has no aunts, 6 male cousins and 2 girl ones, and just an older brother. Among the cousin's kids, boys definitely outnumber the girls. Plus, do you know how hard it is to come up with a boy's name that's not already being used, or as a teacher, that you don't have an aversion to?
 |
| Mom made me put the fake bump on cause I kept complaining that the clothes were too big! |
So for 20 weeks, we've kept ourselves busy. We've had work, Saturdays spent either at an Aggie football game in College Station or watching it on TV, chores around the house, and just life in general. Since I've taken on National Honor Society this year at school, it hasn't been too hard. The hard part was actually having a weekend to go out and find some maternity clothes. I made it in regular clothes to about 15 weeks, but after that it was just more of a comfort issue than a bursting out of my pants one. My mom, bless her heart, spent a whole Saturday with me going around to different stores trying to find something that'd work for school and wasn't going to break the bank. Now, if you've never had the opportunity to wear maternity pants - you are missing out. Honestly, I don't know why I waited to so long! On the comfort scale, pregnancy pants fall between wearing pants with elastic and wearing no pants at all - they're that good.
It's been a good 20 weeks - no over-the-top crazy sickness, the hubs and the kiddos at school take care of anything I need - just some smooth sailing. We had been scheduled to do our 2nd trimester ultrasound the Tuesday after Thanksgiving - so that's what we had been telling people; we'd know boy or girl after Thanksgiving. But then, at one of my checkups (they've been watching my blood pressure), after going over my list of medications with her again, she checked my anxiety meds in her magic book and discovered it was a Class D and could potentially cause harm if taken in the first trimester. Well, talk about too little, too late. None of the doctors I had seen thus far had caught it, so all we could do now is go get a Level 2 ultrasound, which could tell us if there was any harm. Do you know what it's like to have anxiety about anxiety medicine? My OB tried to reassure me though that this was not my fault, and that the studies just said there was possibly a link. That did nothing to help - I'm a worst case scenario type thinker. So for two weeks while we waited for our appointment, my brain was full of "what-ifs."
Our scan was scheduled for the Wednesday before Thanksgiving. We hadn't told anyone about it or the reason why we were going - we just didn't want to get everyone worried if it turned out to be nothing. Plus, I think it was just something that Kevin and I wanted to face on our own. Our child, our thing to worry about. So, we checked in at Katy Memorial Hermann, and I got my little medical bracelet, and we were on our way! The ultrasound tech was super nice and made sure to tell us about everything she was seeing on the screen. Of course, if she hadn't, we'd have never known what we were looking at. It's still a mystery to me how they know exactly what they're seeing, and I just see blobs. When you do a Level 2 ultrasound, they measure all the baby's parts. Length of femur, circumference of head, size of internal organs - it's really detailed. She had asked us very early on if we wanted to know what the sex of the baby was, and of course, we said yes! She made no promises because the baby was being a bit squirmy, but she'd definitely try. I just remember looking at all the different images and just being amazed about how something so tiny, yet so awesome was growing inside of me. We also just had to have a giggle because the baby just looked like a mini-Skeletor to us because at this point in its growth, there's no cute baby fat to plump it up. Then all of a sudden, she got her shot to see the gender, and asked one more time if we wanted to know. YES, we both said together, and she told us, congratulations on your baby girl! I, of course, immediately teared up, and just cried through the rest of the ultrasound. That was our little girl on the screen. Our precious daughter. Kevin, of course, couldn't grin any larger, and was just itching to tell me "I told you so." But more than anything, what we wanted to know was if she was okay, and she was! Everything was there and measuring on schedule. When we met with the geneticist afterwards, she told us that after her research into the drug, the chance for any problems wasn't any higher than what the normal population would have experienced anyways, so we shouldn't worry. It was definitely a relief!
 |
| Left & Right Hand |
 |
| Spine |
 |
| Profile Shot |
 |
| My Mom |
 |
| Kevin's mom |
So as we giddily giggled our way out of the hospital, we were now stuck with another problem: how and when to tell our parents! We knew a whole week before we had told them we would know, so we wanted to do it in some kind of surprising way. We weren't spending the Thanksgiving holidays with both families, but we wanted them both to find out at the same time - so I came up with a puzzle for them to solve. I emailed it to my brother Stephen, with the explicit instructions that he was to put it in an envelope and give it to my mother at 3 PM on Thanksgiving Day. Of course, he wanted to know what it was all about, but we wouldn't tell him. Thirty minutes later he was texting us back that he had figured it out...twerp! LOL. We were spending Thanksgiving in Caldwell with Kevin's family, so we took the puzzle with us and gave it to his mom at 3 pm to work on. Kevin and I just squirmed as we watched his mother work so hard to figure it out. Thirty to forty-five minutes later, their reactions were priceless! My mom was texting me, and his mom was doing the happy dance! They were both super excited to meet their granddaughter, little miss Emma Lynn Banes. Her name is special to us. Her first name is for both my great grandmothers - Emma Graf and Emmie Wright. Both of whom were extraordinary women of faith and family. Her middle name is my middle name, my mother's middle name, and my mother-in-law's middle name. It's kind of tradition in my family to share middle names with parents, and Kevin and I liked carry that idea on.
 |
| Our Thanksgiving puzzle |
So now as we enter the second half of our pregnancy, we've got a lot still to do! Nursery bedding's been picked out and ordered. The room has to be painted. We've got to register! So much to do, and so much to look forward to.
In the end, boy or girl - it's definitely everything nice!
 |
| Me at 20 Weeks |