It's a boy!

The "Cai"  in Caius sounds like the first syllable of kayak, if you're wondering. Caius means "of the earth" and is a Latin name. His middle name is my younger brother's first name; Logan passed away a few years ago. He would be so excited for us! Logan means "from the hollow." Maybe he'll be a very earthy child... or maybe he'll just like dirt! (Or maybe, as a friend said, he'll be a hobbit!)

I'm sure everyone's seen this "news" on Facebook by now, but I just wanted to record some stuff about the day yesterday when the ultrasound showed that we are having a baby boy.

There were SIX of us in the ultrasound room, plus the midwife, plus the doctor doing the ultrasound! My midwife was not available, so I had another one I've seen once before; Dr. Hackett has been an OB in town forEVER, but now he's sort of retired, I think, and just does 20 week ultrasounds in conjunction with my midwife's office. They were both great.

I felt like I had my entourage with me when we were going up the stairs, into the waiting room, into the ultrasound room....! Matt's dad and stepmom came, as well as his younger sister, and my mom came. Thankfully the room was large and we weren't too crowded. Matt sat by the head of the recliner/bed I was on so I could hold his hand and be excited with him.

The midwife asked if we had a feeling whether it was a boy or a girl. I said I kind of felt like it was a boy, but I wasn't sure, and almost everyone I know had told me they thought it was a boy, too; only two or three people have told me they thought it was a girl. The doctor said he'd done nine ultrasounds that morning and they were all girls!

Out came the belly, on went the goo. (Ick.) The doctor looked all over at the baby first. The first picture we got printed off, he was sucking his thumb! He waved his arms around a little, and it was SO NEAT to see it on the screen and feel it inside at the same time! Then *pop* the thumb went in his mouth. We could see all the little finger bones and everything.

Head on the left, facing up; whitish blur on bottom and toward right is body. Four white vertical lines in front of face are little fingers curled into a fist!

I think it was at this point that tears started leaking from my eyes. It was just so amazing to see! The tears continued until we got out of the office.

The doctor looked at the heart and the head and measured some things. Apparently there was something that measured blood flow in the baby. Little colored blobs came up on the screen. I didn't even know it could do that! Then he measured the thigh bone. And he said, "And above that thigh bone is something else..." and I thought immediately, "It's a boy!" but then I wasn't sure (I wasn't exactly certain what I was looking at on the screen) and thought, "Well, whatever it is, boy part or girl part, it's above the thigh bone." Then the midwife said, "It's a little boy part!" and everyone got really excited.

Matt and I looked at each other and grinned and squeezed hands, and then he leaned over and kissed me. I could tell he was so very, very happy and excited. He doesn't get all "Squeeeeee!" and jumping up and down and laughing when he's happy, but I could tell that, in his own Matt way, he was super thrilled. He was a little extra silly and exuberant (for him) the whole rest of the day. Happy, happy daddy!

The doctor continued to look at things and measure things, telling us what everything was. From the picture on the screen, once he pointed it out, it was very clear that this baby is indeed a boy! No mistaking it. In October, when the baby is born, we will NOT be surprised and shocked that it's actually a girl! (I won't subject you to a picture of our son's teeny little penis.) We have a couple good pictures of a little foot pressed up against the wall of my uterus. Here's a good shot of his face:

Head in the center; dark black spot in middle is eye socket. Nose and lips on right side. His hand is in front of his face again. Not that we can tell right now, but I think he's going to look like Matt.

The doctor also focused in on the heart, and we could see all four chambers moving and pumping blood. COOL! He turned the audio on and we could hear the heartbeat! Always a wonderful sound. Then he measured the space between the beats (that showed up on the bottom of the screen) and it was 144 beats per minute: perfect.

The dotted line going vertically halfway through the picture is whatever the doctor used to measure the heart and heartbeats. You can barely see a darker grey blur in the middle of the body; that's the heart! His arm is down along the side of his body, and his leg is curled up funny with his foot over his stomach.

I kept wiping away tears throughout the whole thing, happy, happy tears. I was so glad to finally know the gender and know the baby's name, to call the baby "him" instead of "it." I was happy that Matt was so happy. I was happy that our family was there because they were excited and love us. I was happy that everything about our baby looked to be just perfect and right on schedule and just the right size and shape. (I'd been a very tiny bit worried for a day or two beforehand that they would find something wrong at this ultrasound, so it was nice to have confirmation that things are fine.) I was happy to get to see our baby moving around and alive and beautiful. It was such a wonderful thing. All this science is amazing, and I'm so grateful for it.

As soon as we got out of the office, I put the first two pictures of me in the blue dress on Facebook. (We'd taken alternate pictures of me in a pink dress with a pink bow just in case, so we could upload either the minute we knew.) All day I kept getting texts and FB notification from friends and family. :) Matt's sister had things to do in town with her kids and sis-in-law, but the rest of us all had lunch together. Then Mom and I went shopping for the rest of the afternoon until I was exhausted! It was fun though, and I got things I needed as well as a couple little things I just wanted. Amazingly, we didn't buy any baby stuff! I'm sure that will come soon, though.

I'm sorry this was sooooooo long! I just want to remember all of this for posterity. I'm a little tiny bit sad that I won't get to have tea parties and hair bows and little dresses and dolls right now, but that will come in a few more years, and a boy will be so much (different kind of) fun! We are so happy and excited about little Caius!

Edited to add: Here is Matt's comment reply to all the comments on the picture of me with "It's a boy!" and the baby's name--

Thanks for all the well wishes folks, Heather and I are super excited (me even more so, I think) and were so ready to start on this part of our lives together.

Grammatical errors and all, I love it! :)