Look (s)he's waving!

Throughout the eight weeks since the first ultrasound scan we have debated whether to find out the sex of the baby at the second scan. About a week ago I joked with Hayley "we'll still be deciding whether or not to find out what sex it is when we are driving to the hospital." Sure enough, as we drove through Stockport this morning towards Stepping Hill we were still weighing up the pros and cons.

You may think this sounds like terrible dithering (and you'd probably be right), but in our defence we started out with every intention of finding out the sex of the baby. That was before we came across so many people who told us we shouldn't find out that we were swayed. We had to admit that we had few reasons for wanting to know beyond our excitement. There was also an element of feeling like we would "know" the baby better if we knew its gender, but at the same time Hayley had already grown attached to talking to "bump".

"Not knowing will help you through the last month and the last stages of labour" was the comment of one of Hayley's friends. And we felt no preference for either a boy or a girl, so maybe in that situation it's right not to find out?

Today at the ultrasound scan we didn't specifically ask to know the sex of the baby. Neither did the sonographer ask us whether we wanted to know. Throughout the scan I must confess that I found myself trying to spot meaningful blips on the screen. But our baby was determinedly lying with legs tucked up in front. This made taking some of the measurements difficult, so Hayley was dismissed for 5 minutes to "walk briskly" in the hope that the fetus would turn over. Sure enough when we returned the baby had turned through 180 degrees and there was an improved view. Well, there was an improved view for the sonographer but for the layman it was still all rather cloudy.

All the checks were finally performed. She was able to tell us that the baby is developing at the expected rate and that there were no "soft markers" that might indicate any sort of irregularity. The baby wriggled and squirmed occasionally. And from time to time we were able to see both hands and all the fingers on them. There was a moment when the baby seemed to wave his hand at us much to our amusement, before wriggling into another position that frustrated the sonographer.

After the scan we sat in the waiting room and compared notes. It quickly became apparent that from the mass of swirling lines on the screen we had both drawn the same tentative conclusion: it's a girl! But as this was based on our very sketchy understanding of what we were seeing, we decided to ask the sonographer so as not to leave with a false impression. "Well, she said "I wasn't really concentrating on that aspect. If you'd asked I could have looked....". I had my suspicions that she was dodging the question. She had spent ages looking around to measure the various parts of the baby and I found it hard to believe she didn't even have an inkling as to the gender. But then again we didn't ask so maybe she was telling the truth. And if she hadn't noticed, the chances were that we had been chasing shadows.

So we finished the day in the same boat as we started it. But with the added knowledge that we are still on course.