Hearing the heartbeat, learning the gender.

Yesterday, we had our 3rd visit with the midwife, and heard our baby's heartbeat. I'm telling you, it never gets old (or any more real!). So crazy each and every time to think there is a tiny, heart-driven baby growing inside of me...already along for the ride with me and my hero husband on all of our fun adventures. Very cool. We didn't get an ultrasound yesterday--we were actually hoping for one and a guess on the sex of the baby (we are at week 16) but alas, we have to wait about 3 more weeks for that. No sweat...but we are dying to know!

I originally thought, actually my whole life, that I would not find out the sex of my baby. It was my mom's original plan when she was pregnant with me--until her jerk of a doc spilled the beans and made her cry for spoiling the surprise--so I sorta felt like I wanted to give it a re-do. But my sweet husband reeeeeally wanted to know the gender of our babe-to-be, and I felt like anything that he's excited about, I only want to encourage, so let's just get surprised now, instead of in 5 months, eh?!

As far as the gender guessing game...it sorta goes like this: I have had dreams that we are having a boy, the majority of my friends & fam say it's a boy (partly because I breezed by without morning sickness), my husband has a $300 bet with my wealthy Uncle Danny that it's a boy, and we have only 2 solid boy names thus far. So my mind says we are having a boy. But my gut says never trust the mind, that we are having a girl. Ha, does that even make sense? Basically, it says something about trusting myself--I am usually wrong about stuff like this, so I'm gonna say girl. But if my instincts are spot on, then we are having a boy. There ya go. We will be grateful if we have a normal, non-cholic-y baby, who doesn't drive us bonkers--that's the way I look at it.

Here's shot of yours truly, The Maternal Goddess, in her GAP striped top and quick-get-ready curly hair, at week 16: