The Big Reveal! It's a...

GIRL!

We are so excited to share the news that our sweet baby is a little girl. We had our 21-week ultrasound on Thursday and waited anxiously to see that all of Baby's parts were there and healthy. We saw all four chambers of her heart (which was firing away at 145 bpm), the various parts of her brain, her arms, legs, fingers and toes. (She has cute little feet - at one point they were flexing over and over like she was hitting the gas pedal on a tiny car. Look out in 16 years!) R's favorite quote was when the tech told us, "Your baby is so photogenic! I mean look at that: those are some adorable kidneys!" We saw her face (which, truthfully, is still sort of Skeletor-ish) and her amazingly adorable profile. She had her mouth open for much of the scan, so we were able to see her cute little lips and button nose in all their sweet glory. We are smitten.

Finally, at the end of the scan, the tech asked if we'd like to know the gender. Of course!!! Well wouldn't you know that at that moment, the baby clamped her legs together like a vice?! The tech said we could wait a few minutes and try again, so she entered all of the measurements in a computer while we chatted. Maybe five minutes later, she came over to try again, this time with better luck. There were actually two techs in the room for our whole scan, so they conferred with one another as to what they were seeing. After several minutes of, "Do you see what I see?" "Yep, it looks that way to me." "I mean I keep seeing glimpses, so I just want to be sure..." we finally heard one of them say, "Looks pretty chick-ish!" The other confirmed: "It's a girl!" We saw the "three little lines" that indicate girl parts and that was all I needed!

I thought R would burst with happiness - he's been wanting a little girl all along. I remember soon after we found out we were pregnant, I asked him whether he thought it would be a boy or a girl and he said - full of confidence and swagger - "I gave you a girl." I've been feeling girl all along as well, and have had a dream or two with a little girl in it. I've always thought I wanted a boy, but based on how excited I am, I think my preference just didn't run all that deep. 

Also, remember back to when we had our 12-week scan? Here's the one ultrasound picture we didn't share at that point, which led the tech to guess girl even then:

See the bright white forked line on the right? It points straight down toward the baby's bottom, which is typically indicative of a girl. In a boy, that line would point upward at about a 30-degree angle. At least that's the theory - it's alternately called "Nub Theory" and "Angle of the Dangle Theory". At least in our case, it was right!

So now we can finally get busy preparing! We can start decorating the nursery, choose a name(!!), and wrap up much of our registry. We still want to be largely gender neutral with our registry picks - neither R nor I has any intent of raising a little flouncy pink princess - but surprisingly, it does help to know boy or girl. More importantly, it makes this pregnancy feel so real. We're not having just a baby, not an "it"... we're having a girl! A daughter! And you know what? I can't say I've ever been happier about anything in my life.