It's a GIRL!

A few days ago we shared a video here on my blog and on Facebook to reveal that we are having a GIRL!!! 

Finding out

We went in at exactly 20 weeks (when insurance covers the anatomy scan ultrasound) to see our baby girl and find out that she is definitely not a boy! I felt like we waited forever (as mentioned here) because so many people I know were finding out at like 13 + weeks via blood tests or paying extra money to find out early. But to be honest I'm glad we waited because A) The baby is generally developed enough that you get a pretty accurate answer as opposed to possible confusion earlier on in pregnancy B) You reach the halfway mark and have a little celebration by finding out the gender and C) Finding out the gender at this time is almost just the icing on the cake because you're there to see how your little one is growing and it's not all just about gender.

I went to bed so late the night before because I think I was just so antsy. Finding out the gender is so exciting because you are starting to get to know your sweet baby and being able to really start thinking about what he or she might be like. We woke up really early because we had the appointment first thing in the morning. I realized when I was brushing my teeth that night that I was wearing pink sweatpants and a pink shirt...and my nails and toothbrush were pink. It kind of hit me that I'm a really girly girl so having a boy was going to throw me through a loop because I'd have no idea what I was in for. However, I was excited either way because there are little things about both genders that I was excited about.

We showed up to our appointment and they took us straight back to the ultrasound room. One ultrasound technician had called in sick and I was so worried they were going to have us reschedule (again), but they saw us right away. The technician was very thorough and you could tell she had been doing this for a long time so it was fun to have her walk us through everything we were seeing. Taylor has been taking some anatomy classes for school so he really enjoyed seeing little things that he had learned about. Our sweet baby was moving around like crazy, and at one point was even kind of scratching her bum haha! At that point I was thinking it was a boy because of how active she was the entire time. She had the hiccups during the ultrasound which I can't really feel yet but it was so cute to see her little stomach moving in a way that you could see the hiccups! It was so fun to see even just a little bit of personality through watching her move around on the ultrasound. Then came the moment we were waiting for! My friend Sarah is due a week before me so she had just found out the gender of their baby (also a girl!) and had shown me her ultrasound pictures, so I was hoping that would help me kind of help me know what to expect when we went to check for the lady or man parts ;). However, because it's not a fully developed human yet, I feel like what you see of the baby on the screen can be a little confusing. The technician found the view of our baby's legs and bum and luckily and I thought I saw what was the little man parts (haha how do I put this eloquently?) so in my mind I was like Okay! It's a boy! So I said "Soo...is it a boy??" The technician replied, "It's a girl!". I was genuinely surprised because I thought I had seen that it was a boy. This is why I'm not an ultrasound technician :). Prior to the appointment I thought we would both tear up either way, but I was just really excited and not even emotional (not normal for me these days haha). It was so fun to finally find out a little more of what to expect for when we have our baby! I'm so excited to have a little mini me, and for Taylor to have his little daddy's girl that he's always talked about hoping to have one day.

Our Gender Reveal

Prior to finding out what gender baby girl was, everyone asked us the same two things: 1. What do you guys think you're having? 2. How are you going to find out/tell your families?

First, I'm envious of people who just have gut feelings about this because honestly I had no idea what we were having. I mean, based on all the little wives tales it seemed that we were having a girl, but who knows if those are really indicators. Taylor and I both come from families where there is only one boy in the family. Taylor's dad also has 6 sisters, so given the fact that the male determines the gender we felt chances were high for a girl. We both kind of "wanted" a girl, but when I say "wanted" I realized after lots of thinking about this (because I felt bad preferring one over the other) that we both probably just feel more comfortable and less intimidating raising a girl (although I'm afraid of teenage years) because we both grew up around girls, I grew up dancing, I worked at a bridal shop for 5 years, etc. So basically if we had had a boy I wasn't going to be sad by any means, I was just a bit more nervous because if you know me you know I kind of know nothing about sports, little boy interests, etc. and I was nervous about becoming a parent for the first time and not having a little bit of a heads up of what I was in for as far as what a boy would be like. HOWEVER, that being said, we figured that we very well might have a boy simply because we thought we may have a girl. Also, I am pretty girly and all growing up, all the really girly moms I knew had tons of boys and maybe one girl. Random theory? Yes. But it was true on many accounts!

We decided to just be old school as far as finding out for ourselves. I know a lot of people will find out for themselves by opening an envelope or something at a gender reveal party, but a party wasn't going to happen given the size of our apartment haha. One person had told me that we should have them write it down for us and have us open it later together somewhere because when you find out in the ultrasound you can't like jump up and hug each other or take pictures or anything. However, Taylor had to rearrange some classes to be able to be there (thanks to being rescheduled at the Dr.'s several times!), so we figured we might as well find out there since he was making an effort to be there. We also thought it would be more fun to not have to look away for some parts because wanted to be able to watch the ultrasound the whole time and have them explain what we were seeing.

As far as a "reveal" for our family, I knew this would be tricky because we have family in three different states and on 3 different time zones from us and from each other, and we also had a super busy day that day so we wouldn't be getting home until late. I had seen some people have their friends and family make and show their guesses for gender by holding up lips or mustaches at a party, so I figured I could include that by sending a little package with instructions and a set of lips and mustaches on popsicle sticks to each family.

I summoned my cute husband who is actually pretty good at drawing to draw some lips and a mustache. Then I traced them a million times (enough for each family member to have a boy/girl option so that they could each pick for themselves and take a family pic all together). I realized at this moment that I should invest in a  Cricut machine haha. I just used hot glue to stick on some popsicle sticks.

Here was our little instruction sheet. They are handwritten because our printer is broken...otherwise this would have gone a lot faster, but hey, at least it was a personal letter for everyone! 

I mailed these all out, but (thanks to USPS :/) only two of them got there before we found out (side note---I mailed them over a week ago today and they are still in San Antonio----they mailed out from Houston ://). SO we ended up just having the family who got them send us their pictures with them, and those who didn't just told us their guesses and we whipped out some guessing pictures for them on Photoshop :).

For our reveal pictures, my amazing from Sarah (seriously bless her heart) came and took some pictures for us in the humid freezing cold post-rainy weather (that by the way was followed by really sunny clear skies just a few hours later!). We took some pictures on the top of our apartment building so the that balloons we released (the color of the gender we weren't having) could fly away easily. It was SO windy that the balloons kind of just blew 'side side and away' instead of 'up up and away' as you can see in the pictures (which is why we are laughing in them), but we thought it turned out pretty well! We added these pictures to the end of our slideshow to reveal that baby is a girl!

   

We Skyped with our families one at a time and showed them the video. It was fun for everyone to see the other families' guesses and to finally see the reveal at the end!

It's crazy that we are officially half-way there.  I feel our sweet girl move on and off all throughout the day, and Taylor finally felt a kick (just one so far!) but it has been so exciting as this all starts to feel more real.