As the weeks and months pass by, I still find it unbelievable to think that I am carrying a little baby. For so long there was nothing physically to show for it, and at each of the early sonograms I would look at the screen in disbelief and awe. In the lead up to the anatomy sonogram, which is to check whether the baby is anatomically fine with ten fingers and toes etc., I was both excited and nervous. Excited because it would provide me with more proof of the little person growing day by day inside me, and nervous not just to confirm if the little one has the right amount of body parts, but also because of the paranoid thoughts that something may have gone wrong in between the check ups.
I had to head up to the Columbia University Medical Centre for the anatomy sonogram, which is way up around 165th Street, as my OB/GYN is based up there on Fridays. I had to have it on that day, as I had just reached 18 weeks, which is the earliest you can have the anatomy sonogram, and as I was leaving for London the next day for two weeks, it would be too late for me to have it when I returned.
I hopped on the bed and just before we started, the sonographer asked if I was wanting to find out the sex of the baby that day. Mark and I had spoken about it before, and Mark had said that he would prefer not to find out, but if I really wanted to then I could. I had been totally torn for weeks, as I really wanted to find out for a number of reasons. The main one was because I was so hoping for a little boy to start, so that we'd have an older brother scenario, and because of this I thought I might need a little time to also get excited about a little girl. Plus, I thought that it would be nice to be able to talk to and refer to the baby as whatever it was and with a name, which would allow us to have more of a connection with it. I was also so over people, in particular strangers, telling me what they thought I was having because of where I was gaining weight! So when she asked me if I would like to find out, I answered her by saying, "Well, my husband doesn't want to know, so I don't want you to tell me, but I really want to know!". She laughed and said, "Well, this is going to take quite a while, and if you're paying attention you'll be able to see me type the chromosomes on the screen at one point", so I made sure I paid attention the whole way through. It did take quite a while because the whole exercise was an amazingly thorough one, in literally looking for each and every body part to make sure it was present and correct. When we finally got to a screen where I thought I recognised a little fluro member, she wrote 'XY' on the screen, and I knew that they were the chromosomes I was looking at. She stayed on the screen and asked if I could see. I said, "Oh wow, it's a boy!", to which she laughed and said, "I'm neither confirming nor denying". I was so excited, but was still aiming to keep it a secret, thinking to myself that I hadn't been definitively told, so I could be wrong!
Mark had his suspicions that night when he returned from Chicago, asking me how it went. I told him that the sonographer had said that he was an extremely active baby, flipping and twisting all the time. He asked me why I was referring to it as a boy, and I told him that the sonographer had been referring to it as a boy, which was the truth even before the chromosome screen, so I was just naturally doing the same. I also told him that the sonographer had said the baby had long fingers, to which Mark replied, "Golly, we might pop out a funny-looking, ginger-haired kid." I asked why we'd have a baby with red hair, and he reminded me that all three of his brothers are strawberry blonde and had red hair as kids. What colour hair our little boy has is yet to be seen, but Prince Harry has certainly made red hair sexy.. haha!
I left for London early the next morning, successfully without having disclosed the chromosome story to Mark. Over the two weeks that I was there seeing my girlfriends (and working out of the London office at the same time), I was asked numerous times if I knew what we were having. I was hopeless at keeping mum about it (literally!), though my reply would be, "I think we are having a boy because I think I saw the chromosomes". I was dying to speak to Mark, as I couldn't hold it or my excitement in any longer and wanted to share it with him, but it had been impossible to speak to each other during the second week of my trip, as he was doing the Atacama Desert Race with Richie, a crazy week-long race through the Chilean desert that encompassed a marathon or more each day, and there was no phone coverage out there. Richie had taken up the email package so that he could send long messages back to Emma at the end of each day for Em to update his blog, but other than that, Emma and I had no direct contact with the boys, and would have to wait until they were back at the finish line in San Pedro to speak to them.
I returned to London the day after the boys finished the race, and that afternoon Mark and I Skyped while he was waiting to board his plane back to NYC. He told me how he had been telling people doing the race that we were going to name our baby Sunny if it was a boy, because we got married on the Sunshine Coast, or Goldie if it was a girl, because I was from the Gold Coast. I started blurting that I actually had to tell him something and straight away he said, "I knew it.. you know don't you! Ok, what are we having, a Sunny or a Goldie?" I said, "We're having a Hunter", as that was the name that I had previously mentioned to him that I loved. He smiled, and jokingly said that the fact that we were having a boy softened the blow of finding out early, though I think he also secretly wanted a boy to start.
It's so nice being able to talk to him as a 'he' and with a name (Hunter has stuck so far.. result!). He is now also kicking, or performing somersaults or whatever he is doing in there, more and more each day, which is a strange feeling but very exciting at the same time. The movements were initially less obvious, feeling more like bodily twitches similar to indigestion rather than anything foreign in my tummy area, but as the weeks have gone on, they are now clearly identifiable, and Mark and I get a lot of enjoyment simply by waiting for them with our hands on my belly while we watch bad television each night!
I had to head up to the Columbia University Medical Centre for the anatomy sonogram, which is way up around 165th Street, as my OB/GYN is based up there on Fridays. I had to have it on that day, as I had just reached 18 weeks, which is the earliest you can have the anatomy sonogram, and as I was leaving for London the next day for two weeks, it would be too late for me to have it when I returned.
I hopped on the bed and just before we started, the sonographer asked if I was wanting to find out the sex of the baby that day. Mark and I had spoken about it before, and Mark had said that he would prefer not to find out, but if I really wanted to then I could. I had been totally torn for weeks, as I really wanted to find out for a number of reasons. The main one was because I was so hoping for a little boy to start, so that we'd have an older brother scenario, and because of this I thought I might need a little time to also get excited about a little girl. Plus, I thought that it would be nice to be able to talk to and refer to the baby as whatever it was and with a name, which would allow us to have more of a connection with it. I was also so over people, in particular strangers, telling me what they thought I was having because of where I was gaining weight! So when she asked me if I would like to find out, I answered her by saying, "Well, my husband doesn't want to know, so I don't want you to tell me, but I really want to know!". She laughed and said, "Well, this is going to take quite a while, and if you're paying attention you'll be able to see me type the chromosomes on the screen at one point", so I made sure I paid attention the whole way through. It did take quite a while because the whole exercise was an amazingly thorough one, in literally looking for each and every body part to make sure it was present and correct. When we finally got to a screen where I thought I recognised a little fluro member, she wrote 'XY' on the screen, and I knew that they were the chromosomes I was looking at. She stayed on the screen and asked if I could see. I said, "Oh wow, it's a boy!", to which she laughed and said, "I'm neither confirming nor denying". I was so excited, but was still aiming to keep it a secret, thinking to myself that I hadn't been definitively told, so I could be wrong!
Mark had his suspicions that night when he returned from Chicago, asking me how it went. I told him that the sonographer had said that he was an extremely active baby, flipping and twisting all the time. He asked me why I was referring to it as a boy, and I told him that the sonographer had been referring to it as a boy, which was the truth even before the chromosome screen, so I was just naturally doing the same. I also told him that the sonographer had said the baby had long fingers, to which Mark replied, "Golly, we might pop out a funny-looking, ginger-haired kid." I asked why we'd have a baby with red hair, and he reminded me that all three of his brothers are strawberry blonde and had red hair as kids. What colour hair our little boy has is yet to be seen, but Prince Harry has certainly made red hair sexy.. haha!
I left for London early the next morning, successfully without having disclosed the chromosome story to Mark. Over the two weeks that I was there seeing my girlfriends (and working out of the London office at the same time), I was asked numerous times if I knew what we were having. I was hopeless at keeping mum about it (literally!), though my reply would be, "I think we are having a boy because I think I saw the chromosomes". I was dying to speak to Mark, as I couldn't hold it or my excitement in any longer and wanted to share it with him, but it had been impossible to speak to each other during the second week of my trip, as he was doing the Atacama Desert Race with Richie, a crazy week-long race through the Chilean desert that encompassed a marathon or more each day, and there was no phone coverage out there. Richie had taken up the email package so that he could send long messages back to Emma at the end of each day for Em to update his blog, but other than that, Emma and I had no direct contact with the boys, and would have to wait until they were back at the finish line in San Pedro to speak to them.
I returned to London the day after the boys finished the race, and that afternoon Mark and I Skyped while he was waiting to board his plane back to NYC. He told me how he had been telling people doing the race that we were going to name our baby Sunny if it was a boy, because we got married on the Sunshine Coast, or Goldie if it was a girl, because I was from the Gold Coast. I started blurting that I actually had to tell him something and straight away he said, "I knew it.. you know don't you! Ok, what are we having, a Sunny or a Goldie?" I said, "We're having a Hunter", as that was the name that I had previously mentioned to him that I loved. He smiled, and jokingly said that the fact that we were having a boy softened the blow of finding out early, though I think he also secretly wanted a boy to start.
It's so nice being able to talk to him as a 'he' and with a name (Hunter has stuck so far.. result!). He is now also kicking, or performing somersaults or whatever he is doing in there, more and more each day, which is a strange feeling but very exciting at the same time. The movements were initially less obvious, feeling more like bodily twitches similar to indigestion rather than anything foreign in my tummy area, but as the weeks have gone on, they are now clearly identifiable, and Mark and I get a lot of enjoyment simply by waiting for them with our hands on my belly while we watch bad television each night!
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