To know or not to know...

that was the question. The answer - because I am weak and terribly impatient - is to know.

I walked into the ultrasound room today with the conviction that I would not find out the sex of the baby. I'm not sure why, other than already having told everyone we weren't finding out.

The technician went through the standard ultrasound steps - heart, head, spine, appendages. All there. Whew. The baby's face was hidden due to positioning and hands over the face. The shyness must come from Husband's side of the family. (The best pic was of the hands looking in need of some brass knuckles. Pow pow.)

As we finished up I asked the tech if she knew what it was. Sure do, she said. I looked at Husband, who had made no secret that he wanted to find out. He looked at the floor. "Do you really want to know?" I asked. "Yeah, I really do," he said.

So I caved. Also, I sought validation since I was certain it was a boy. My acupuncturist had speculated boy after checking my pulse for some eastern-mediciney indicator. He also said his accuracy rate was over 90 percent. This, plus an online predictor test, put me in the boy state of mind. Husband found my actions ridiculous, implying if I want to know, why not know for sure.

Maybe I should have skipped all the hullabaloo. It was a lot of fun. It was also wrong. We're having a girl.

This was a bittersweet moment. Not because it is a girl, but because Husband's mom passed away last month and she really wanted a granddaughter. (She already had two of the coolest grandsons ever by way of Husband's sister.)

After we processed this, Husband asked if this means we have to have Barbies. I said not all girls necessarily love Barbies. (Only 99.9 percent of them do.) I also reassured him we can still register at REI for outdoorsy girl stuff. His final request was not to "go all pink" with everything. I promised I would not. By the time we walked to the car he was talking about establishing curfews. Thank god we have a while before dealing with that. A teenage girl. Oh dear.

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