Rainbow Baby Update - We Know the Gender!

Yesterday, a year and a day after Violet's diagnosis, we returned to Maternal Fetal Medicine to have our 19 week anatomy scan for our rainbow baby.

I would be lying if I said it was all happiness walking back into that building, even though we knew we were most likely getting good news.  

We took the elevator up, talking about how we had our labor/delivery and breast feeding classes for E there.  They had us put a ping pong ball in a inflated balloon and squeeze it out with the squeezes being contractions, the ball being the baby, and the balloon being the uterus.  My ping pong ball wouldn't come out and my balloon popped which we now joke was a sign of our need for a c-section with E.  So the building isn't all sad memories, but it is definitely a bittersweet place where we've visited with all of our pregnancies while some women never step foot in there for a detailed scan.  

It's also where we learned  a lot about Violet, where we saw her monthly on the monitor with her percentages so small yet she was so darling, always hiding her face from the ultrasound wand.

Her little sibling was NOT that shy.  The baby was moving a lot because I drank orange juice so we would have an active show and learn the gender.  We did get our answer right away as the baby wasn't hiding a thing!  The tech told us not to give this one OJ after s/he is born because it wouldn't hold still.  We got a lot of great pictures.

They took the measurements they needed.  This baby's percentages are mostly on the large to average size, with some of the measurements being at least a week ahead.  

A doctor came in and reviewed the scans, took a look for himself, and said, "The baby looks good."

Good meaning healthy.  Such simple, typical, expected news, but what a gift.

We are doing a lot of gender reveal celebrations over the next few weeks, but I will also share the news here after everyone we are telling in person knows.  It's kind of fun, but difficult, to have it as a family secret for now.  And you won't get any reliable information out of E.  Even though we've told her the news, she is still talking about both a boy and a girl baby, using the names we had picked for each.