It's a .......

Well, you're gonna have to wait a few minutes if you are here to find out what gender our baby is. First, you have to read about Maddie's latest doctor's visit. As I talked about in my last post, Maddie has had an unusual sensitivity to sound lately. I made an appointment with her ear, nose, and throat doctor, Dr. Keyser. He's the one that took her tonsils out last October. We got in there, he looked in her little ears, and said that they looked just fine. He said that very often they get kids her age in there complaining of sensitivity to sound. Some kids even say that very quiet things like the dishwasher hurts their ears (for Maddie it's the toilet flushing). He wanted to check her hearing because there is a chance that she could have what's called hypercusis. That happens when there is nerve damage to the ear and therefore a degree of hearing loss but also an increased sensitivity to some sounds and frequencies. If she didn't do well on the hearing test he would want to look into it further but if she passed he would advise that we wait a year or two and the problem should correct itself. He has never seen a child complaining of sensitivity, pass the hearing test, and come back with worsening symptoms. So, Dr. Keyser took us to Diane who would be doing the hearing test. She put me and Maddie in a tiny, dark booth. She indicated that Maddie should sit in the chair in the middle of the room and I should sit on the stool in the corner. Very helpfully, Maddie went over to the stool, patted its top a few times and said, "right here Mama." She then went over and sat in the big chair. Her feet barely hung down over the edge. Diane put some earphones in her ears and told her that when she heard the little birdies chirp she was to raise her hand as high as she could. Diane then left the booth and sat down at the computer on the other side of the wall. A glass window separated her from Maddie. Of course, I couldn't hear anything but every few seconds Maddie would stretch her arm up as far as possible and smile proudly as Diane said, "good listening!" in her earphones. Towards the end she got a little bored and started clicking her tongue, squeaking her shoes together, and even raised her hand when there was no bird chirping. In the end, she passed with flying colors. All looks well and Maddie is just one of the many kids that experience sound sensitivity for no apparent reason. Here's a picture Ben took of her on his cell phone during the test. She looks a bit stiff because, even though she was not told she had to, she was trying really hard to sit perfectly still.



Okay, now for the exciting part! =) The past few days have been almost unbearable for me. Almost all I could think about was how many more days we would have to wait for our 20 week ultrasound and to find out if we are having a boy or girl. Our ultrasound is scheduled for two weeks from today. The suspense has been killing me! My mom laughs at me because when she was having babies people had to wait 9 months to find out if they were having a boy or a girl. There's no way I could possibly go the entire 9 months! Anyway, as I was laying in bed wide awake around 2:00 this morning I suddenly and completely out of the blue remembered that the last time I was down in the Provo mall they had a little studio where you could go in and get an ultrasound done. I got online and did a little research. The ultrasounds cost about $80 and they'll tell you the gender. I told Ben about it this morning and we headed down this afternoon hoping that today was the day. We found out that we wouldn't have to go all the way down to Provo after all because there is also a studio in one of the malls in Salt Lake. We called on our way down and made an appointment for 6:00. As I said a few posts back I have felt really strongly that this baby is a boy. Maddie has insisted since the beginning that we are having a boy, and poor Ben who has been surrounded by estrogen his entire life, has been hoping for a little boy for years! We recently thought that perhaps we should at least entertain the idea that we could be having a little girl so yesterday we picked out a girl's name. I have also been trying to coax Maddie into accepting the idea that we might have a little girl. We went out to dinner before the appointment and while we were there I asked her what she would think if our baby was a girl. Without hesitation she said, "we should send her back." She absolutely does not want a sister! (Oh, the anticipation!) We went into our appointment this evening and met the guy who would be doing the ultrasound. He was a very nice OBGYN from Europe. I laid down on the table and was amazed at the setup they had in there. The guy had his own monitor, straight in front of me on the wall was my own tv with the same picture, and on the wall in front of Ben and Maddie was their own big widescreen tv. He started the ultrasound and our baby's big head was there on the screens. The baby was all balled up and sleeping soundly. We got a couple profile shots, then heard the heartbeat, and then headed down south to find the boy or girl parts. Right away the Dr. said, "Oh! I see some testicles!" but Ben and I were looking at the same thing he was and didn't see anything even remotely resembling testicles. I was highly doubtful at this point. Like I said the little booger was sleeping soundly in a little ball so the Dr. couldn't get the between the legs, money shot. After a few more tries he started poking and prodding my belly in an attempt to get Baby Friend to move around a bit. That was not received well! The baby got very mad at that point and started thrashing around. It kicked me really hard, many, many times. But, it did the trick. We were all anxiously looking at our screens when suddenly Ben shouted out, "there it is!" The Dr. paused the screen, backed up a couple frames, and da-da-da-daaaaa! The money shot! There on the screen were the testicles that the Dr. had seen and all that goes along with them. It's a boy!! We are all really excited to meet little Hayes McClellan Friend at the end of August. Like I said, we have our official ultrasound on April 14th so look for a confirmation picture of the little boy parts. In the mean time here's a couple pictures we got at today's ultrasound.