Part 16, Trying for Another Blog Series
I made it. Week 20. 5 months. I feel like I have a real baby now. Some significant things happened this week.
On Tuesday we had our twenty-week anatomy scan, where they check for all the parts. I don’t know exactly why, but this anatomy scan was much more emotional for me than the other two. I feel like the pregnancy hit me in a whole different capacity when I saw the baby moving around inside my body. It’s not that I didn’t feel pregnant before, but I hadn’t felt like I was really housing a human yet.
Multiple times during the scan tears welled in my eyes, as I thought about all that the baby has been doing with me: playing tennis matches, running around teaching Kindergarten PE classes, building my business. I had this overwhelming feeling of strength and resilience from this baby. I mean this baby came in one shot. It took it’s one shot for survival and made it. I felt such awe for this little human and connection as we have already gone through so much together.
No, we still didn’t find out the gender! Haha. It was very tempting though! Luc and I talked about how easy it would be to change our minds and find out right then! But, we didn’t. I said, “we just need to make it through this appointment, then we can decide to change our minds if we want.” Luc and I both expressed feeling it was a boy during the scan though. When it came time for her to scan the genitals she simply asked us to look away. I tracked Luc’s eyes the whole time. :) I’m pretty sure the tech referred to the baby as “she” after the scan though. I didn’t say anything because I didn't want to know- so I’m leaving that open for interpretation.
When the tech left, Luc looked up at the screen disappointedly and said, “oh, it says female right there.” Right next to my name and medical record number was “FEMALE.” I laughed and told him it was referring to me. He was so scared for a minute.
Luc and I left and talked about how we both realized we would slightly rather have a boy (I already knew that). And I confessed my guilty reason for that. “My reason is totally sexist,” I said. And reading my mind, he said, “What, because boys sports are more fun to watch than girls?” “YES!” I shouted. Although it’s not quite that. It’s that I think a boy has more potential to have a future in sports than a girl. Isn’t that terrible of me? First of all, that I prioritize sports so much, and second of all that I have such a sexist view of it. I feel guilty admitting this, but blogs are for honesty, right? And I imagine that we all hold these biased parenting views in one way or another.
“It’s totally not true,” Luc assured me. “Ella could end up being the best athlete of them all.” Yes, she could, but I'm sorry to say that I'm pretty sure that I raised them differently from early on because of their gender. I didn’t focus on sports from super early on with Ella like I did with Anders. And that was just an innate thing that happened on my end, not intentional. But maybe, if we have a girl, now that I'm aware of it, I will be intentional about exposing her to sports more. Not that I should be trying to dictate that they love sports anyways- they will love what they love in the long run anyways, and I don't think I have that much control over it really.
In other news, I had my first, “oh, I may not be reaching the end of being able to play tennis” experience on Monday. It was hot, and late in the day, so both of those things may have played a factor. Plus I lost, so that’s a possible mental factor. Haha. I’m going to see if I feel like that again, but surely my time is coming to an end soon.
The school shooting at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas happened this week. It left me feeling very somber. Such extreme sadness experienced by many due to this sick teenager’s actions. And then to find out that the police officers were outside the classroom for an hour during the shooting, while the parents were barricaded from entering. Ugh. Sickness in my heart and belly. I’m glad I've had the opportunity to talk to other moms about our feelings around this.
In much lighter news, we bought our tickets to Disneyland this week. We are surprising our kids with their first trip to Disneyland at the end of June. I can’t wait to tell them! They’re going to be over the moon excited. Do you want to know what it costs to book tickets for 2 adults, 3 kids to go to Disneyland for 3 days? Almost $2,000. Gulp. And the hotel costs about that much too. It’s crazy. I can’t believe we’re spending that much on this trip. But I legitimize it by the fact that we pretty much never take trips. Looking forward to this one!
One more week of school for the boys and then let summer break begin!
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