It's a...!

While writing this, our cleaning lady who comes once/week (God bless her and the fact that we can afford it!) is beating the dust out of our couch pillows in the living room as if her life depended on it, I’m helping my fourth grader with his paper on Charlemagne, and my 3-year old is playing some kind of loud music game on the iPad right next to me on the other side. So; if there’s something in this blog post that doesn’t quite make sense – now you know why.

I went for one of my regular prenatal check-ups this morning. When I was pregnant in Belgium, I went to see a midwife for my regular check-ups, and she would measure my uterus to make sure it was growing, check my blood pressure and then we’d listen to the baby’s heart beat with a Doppler. In Egypt I barely had any check-ups, and the ones I had were similar to my Belgian experience. In both countries, I only had a couple of ultrasounds and they were performed in a special ultrasound center/hospital. Here in Lebanon, I see an OB-GYN over at the hospital. He has an ultrasound machine in his office, and uses it for every check-up. It’s great to get to see the baby every time I go. Today he examined the baby’s private parts and was able to determine the sex of this baby. And guess what? You may now officially call me and my husband the mighty boy-makers! That’s right. The boys were a little disappointed at first when I told them, “Because,” they said, “we really needed a girl on our team.” Whatever that means. But they’re already over it. I know my mom will be very disappointed too – sorry mom! – but what can you do? I’m happy. Boys are great! And no, we didn’t have this baby so that we could try for a girl. A lot of people ask me that question. I find it a very strange idea, but maybe some people keep having babies for such a purpose.

I have to admit that I did, when I first found out I was pregnant, walk through the little girls’ section at H&M one day while shopping there, just to have a look. There were so many cute items, none of which had pictures of Angry Birds, zombies or boys on surf boards/tractors/motorcycles on them. I looked and I thought, “Oh wow, I wouldn’t even know where to start! Everything is SO cute!” Sigh. Oh well, oh well. Think of all the money we’re saving, right?