Friday, August 7, 2009

Boy or Girl?

I have no regrets about not finding out the gender of our baby, but the anticipation is killing me! (I don't do well with surprises of any kind.) I've been trying to determine based on "symptoms" - but according to wives tales, I could be having either one. I had read something about fetal heart rates - boys hearts beat faster, I thought. This baby's heart rate has been in the 140s; Nathan's was always in the 150s. This seemed a little more scientific than the "dangle your wedding ring" trick. But I looked it up, and the articles I read said that this is not true - there is no difference except during labor (when girls' hearts beat faster).
As I've said before, I think it's a boy just based on how much he moves - ALL. THE. TIME. But Paul's mom pointed out it could be a "red-headed girl with a temper" - something she'd know about (Paul's sister is a redhead).
We have a girls name settled on. We're still working on a boy's name. Paul has one that he likes, and I like the sound of the name, and any possible nicknames, but have two problems with it: the meaning (I'm big on meanings - probably because my name means "a ewe"), and the fact that it's been in the top 10 most popular baby names for the last 5 years (another hang up of mine, probably because no matter where I went, there was another "Rachel"). Although I don't think I've met any little ones with this name. I don't know - I may go with it, because Paul is so dang stubborn he's probably not going to let go. And I've been researching some alternate meanings, and when you look at it that way, the meaning doesn't sound so bad.
Sorry to say all this and not tell you what the actual name is. I want to have it settled first. We told people we were considering "Quinn" for a boy's name with Nathan, and so many people blurted out "But that's a girls name!" Umm... Actually it's not. It's been a boys name a lot longer than it's been a girls name! (It's Paul's middle name.) So we used it as Nathan's middle name as well. I just don't want people's opinions this time (although I have mentioned it to some friends and family).
Anyhow. That's today's dilemma. The doctor's appointment went well this morning. She's happy with how everything's going. I'm still not happy with how much weight I've gained. I'm trying to eat healthy, but some days it's just too dang hard.
I'm sick with a cold (thank you, dear husband and son), and it's 100 degrees out. That makes for a bit of misery/wanting to sleep. Not to mention how wonderful it feels to cough when you have a the beginnings of a hernia - being afraid that your guts might pop out the weak spot in your belly. Also, I fell off the stage at church this morning and twisted both ankles - well, twisted one, banged the other (the one that already is permanently purple). So that makes for even more wanting to be lazy.
After wallowing in all this self-pity, I am now completely unmotivated to clean the kichen, and feel fully justified in going to take a nap.

2 comments:

Tiffany said...

We loved waiting to find out what we were having with Dalton but my gut feeling the whole time was that it was a boy. We'll do the same this next time.

Brooke said...

So many people thought I was crazy for waiting to find out. I didn't have a hard time at all. Nothing can compare to that moment in the delivery room. Each time now, when it was time to start pushing, I started crying because I was so overwhelmed with excitement and joy. I haven't experienced being told at a sonogram what I'm having, but I can't believe it could even come close to the same emotional high as finding out in the delivery room. I hope it's like that for you this time.