Before Ellie was born, we were pretty sure she was a girl, mostly because I’d had 2-3 dreams in which I clearly knew that she was a girl and because one of the midwives in our practice had been fairly definitive in her opinion that she was a girl.  Pretty flimsy I know but we ended up being right!

So this time around, we’re trending towards, “Baby B2 is a boy,” and here’s why:

1. I’ve only had one baby-related dream and in that dream, he was a boy.  Granted, he also looked like Ellie’s doll but still, he was a boy!

2.  With Ellie, my hair was excessively greasy.  With this pregnancy, my hair is actually far less greasy than usual.  This points to different hormones in my body and to a boy.

3. People are telling me that my belly looks different, that I’m carrying this baby differently.  So maybe that means boy?

4. The same midwife who touched my tummy with Ellie and said, “Hello little girl!”, did the same thing to me at my last appointment.  Only this time, she didn’t even ask me if we knew boy/girl, she just said, “Hello little guy!”  Will she be right two times in a row?

5.  Two different Chinese birth calendars both tell me that B2 will be a boy.  (One of them was wrong with Ellie.)  (Obviously, we don’t put our confidence in these things.)

So there you go.  Overwhelming evidence that we’re having a boy! 🙂  But don’t worry, we are neither holding our breath or buying lots of blue clothes.  We are fully prepared and happy to welcome either a son or a daughter whenever he or she decides to join us.

Here’s why we won’t know for sure about boy/girl until he/she is born:

We decided not to have any ultrasounds with this baby.  With Ellie, I did have two ultrasounds (a dating ultrasound at 8 weeks and the standard 20-week ultrasound to check for problems).  Those ultrasounds were incredibly stressful and troubling for me, primarily because I know of too many people who’ve been told that their baby will have terrible birth defects, only to eventually find out that the baby is perfectly fine.

This pregnancy, we asked our midwives if we could skip them altogether and they told us that we definitely could.  There’s actually not much compelling medical research to show that routine medical ultrasounds are actually all that useful.  Ultrasounds that are ordered by medical professionals because there are other indications of problems usually are quite useful.  But the ultrasounds done just because the technology allows it usually don’t provide much useful information.  So, we were happy to skip them entirely.

If our midwives think it’s necessary (because they think there’s a problem), we will have an ultrasound but we will only do one as a last resort.

I’ve been really grateful not to have to have any ultrasounds this pregnancy.  I know that probably sounds weird because most women are really excited for the chance to “see” their baby.  I, rather, have really enjoyed just being pregnant without anything from the outside intruding on the experience.  It’s made me a much calmer pregnant mama, I think.

So, little boy or little girl, we’re excitedly waiting to find out what and who you will be, come December/January!  (We’d love the tax credit though so come in 2012 if you can!)