The Sounding

We were scheduled to have an ultrasound this week so as instructed I drank an entire quart of water before 7:15. The ultrasound was scheduled for 8:15. This meant I had to wait in agony for an hour. My mother informed me that lo those long thirty years ago they had made her drink huge amounts of water also. This effectively means that ultrasound technology hasn't advanced anywhere since the middle of the last century. That's comforting.

We were supposed to stop by the lab for blood work first, but upon trying to check in they informed me I had to have a piece of paper which I definitely didn't have, so we went upstairs to get said piece of paper and the receptionists just stared at me. "What piece of paper?" they said. That was my thought. Don't we live in a paperless society now?

Finally we were ushered into the Ultrasound Room, the big event, with the ultrasound technician greeting me with a smile. A small silence ensued, and then my husband introduced himself. This is our irony: I get more attention than I really want, while he gets completely ignored.

It turns out the water torture was really just to get a good look at my cervix (and did anybody ask me if they could go snooping around my private parts from the inside??) and then I was allowed to become normal again. Finally we got to the part we were really interested in: getting a good first look at Stanley Hilarius.

Stanley's looking pretty good! Stanley has a head, two arms, two legs, a brain and a four chambered heart, all of which we got to see. More importantly, Stanley really is in there, swimming around, a fact we knew, of course, but couldn't really imagine until now.

And we did, in the end, find out Stanley's gender. And for those of you who are dying to know, it turns out Stanley Hilarius is..........


either a boy or a girl. You'll find out soon enough.