It's a .... XY!!

On January 9th was our midway pregnancy ultrasound! I was 18.5 weeks and soooo nervous. The night before our ultrasound I felt like I hardly slept, and I dreamt constantly about the ultrasound. I was excited about finding out gender, but didn't really care whether we were having a boy or girl. Brian and I both had a feeling it was a girl when I first got pregnant. Then that disappeared and I realized I had no "motherly intuition" and I had no clue what I thought the baby was. I was just nervous that we would get in there and our baby would have missing limbs, or intestines outside his/her body. It's just such a miracle that any baby is born healthy. 

Anyways the ultrasound was so fun! Our ultrasound tech was so nice and took almost a full hour with us. She went through every body part so slow and answered all of our questions. If the baby wasn't in a good position she would just be like, no problem we will go back later. It was so fun to actually be able to see bones, and all the body parts of our little one. Every time she would point another body part, I would feel such a sense of relief. Like phew, our baby has an ear.. or our baby has a brain.

Our ultrasound tech said I was actually measuring 5 days ahead of schedule. But I decided to just keep my original due date because I didn't want to be bummed if I went over 40 weeks. Plus, Van Blerkom's are knows for their big heads. Like I think my nephew was 99.9 percentile or something. So who even knows.

Also, our little babe moved like crazy the whole time! We saw his jaw move like he was talking, and his hands and feet kept kicking and moving. Brian looked over at me and was like, oh gosh we already have a hyper one. Weirdly I felt nothing though, I was so ready to feel some movement, but at least we got to see it on the screen.

Our friend Cassie offered to make us a gender reveal cake to find out gender of our babe instead of at the ultrasound. I wasn't sure I wanted to have a party because I felt kind of selfish and maybe just wanted Brian and I to be there. But then I figured I would probably only do a gender reveal party for the first baby and I love having parties!

We asked our ultrasound tech to warn us when the gender part was coming up and we would just close our eyes. Then she would take a picture and put it in an envelope we brought. Brian got a little excited when we got to gender. When I told him to close his eyes and he said, "Anything I see on the ultrasound is fair game!" and wouldn't close his eyes. Then when he thought he knew the gender he closed his eyes and she typed the gender out. Brian had asked before hand if there was a way to tell that it's a girl other than just absence of boy parts. The ultrasound tech said yes there were some other things they looked for, she said there is 3 distinct lines on a girl. Brian saw a blurrier version of the picture below and he swore he saw 3 distinct lines, so he thought it was a girl! HA!

So we took the sealed envelope with the above picture to Cassie's house and came home to decorate. We had my favorites! Cotton candy, rock candy, and then m&ms for Brian.

When our friends got there we played the Old Wives Tale game. The game definitely said I was having a girl. Most voted that I was having a girl, with a few random boy guesses. I guessed boy, because by this in the day point, I really felt it was a boy. Brian guessed girl, because he is a cheater and thought he already knew.

                           We cut into the cake to find out that we were having a BOY!

Thank you Cassie for making us a cake and to everyone who came and took pictures and filmed!