It's a......GIRL

Today we headed over to the hospital for our first ultrasound there. I didn’t understand before today why we had to go to the hospital for an ultrasound when the doctor’s office has a machine. Well, for starters, this ultrasound took about an hour and the machine turned out to be the doctor’s office ultrasound machine on steroids, so a little more elaborate to say the least.

I had no idea that it would be so involved. The tech took a picture of everything, measured every part, recorded data, it was quite involved. Today, Tiffany should have been about 17 weeks and 2 days. After they put all the calculations into the computer they let us know that Tiffany is 17 weeks and 2 days so everything was right on target.

We were looking forward to today because we would find out the sex of the baby and we did, obviously. We arrived at the hospital right on time and checked in at which time they handed us one of those buzzers that you get when you are waiting for a table at the restaurant.  We were then shown the waiting room as the bar was not open yet...

In the waiting room we encountered other pregnant woman in various stages of pregnancy accompanied by mates, mothers and the like. They had a nice coffee machine so I helped myself and took a seat with TIffany and watched CNN’s nonstop coverage of the Clinton wedding.

Before long, our buzzer sounded  and we went to register where Tiffany got a full fledge hospital bracelet. No ultrasound yet. We returned to the weighting room sans buzzer, just waiting on a tech to call our name. A few moments later she did and I jumped up ready for the big moment. False start number 2. I was then told that they would come get me later when Tiffany was set up in the room. I sat back down and went back to my coffee and CNN while wondering why I couldn’t come along.

Soon enough the tech came back and got me and I was face-to-face with Megatron, I mean the ultrasound machine. I thought they would put the jelly on, get the picture going and tell us the sex. Not the case. After about 10 minutes of snapping pics of the femur and other parts that we knew were there, we arrived at the decisive moment/frame which is pictured to the left.

See those three lines that the arrow is pointing to, that’s baby Pirone’s, let’s say, special place. The other pic is actually of the face, taken later.

Tiffany has been concerned that I was going to be disappointed with a girl. Being the last male Pirone still able to have children, I do want to have a boy. But I want a girl too. Now the next time around, I may be a bit disappointed with a girl, but I guess we’ll see. I still have Chase, so we won’t have the numbers anymore, we’ll still be even. 

The ultrasound took an hour because baby girl Pirone was not cooperating. She was napping and hardly moving at all. Tiffany even drank some juice. No such luck, she could not be bothered. They saw everything they needed to see except for a few parts of the heart so they asked that we come back for another one in a month. We actually made it for the first Wednesday in September, that will be 22 weeks. It will be interesting to see how much she has grown by then.

After the ultrasound we headed over to the doctor’s office. I should say the nurse practitioner's office as Dr. Thompson was MIA once again. That makes one appearance by her in about 6 doctor’s visits now, if you’re keeping score at home. (I know I am)They said she was “sick” today, on a Friday, how convenient. I guess I could have been too sick to pay our bill for her services, but we went ahead and paid for the delivery today, you know the delivery that’s occurring in January.

Tiffany did ask why we had to pay the deductible for next year now and asked what would happen if the delivery was in December. We were told that they would issue a refund if there was a remaining balance after all the fees. Yeah, I’m not holding my breath. We are saving the money on the circumcision though :)!

After we found out the sex I had several thoughts, but the recurring theme was my concern over when my daughter would start dating and since Chelsea’s wedding is all over the news, how much her wedding would cost? I’m going to go ahead and say right now that it won’t be 3 million like Chelsea, but that’s not really the point. I don’t see myself talking it well when some guy comes over to pick my daughter up for a date. I’m hoping I don’t spend the next 16 years (that’s right baby girl Pirone 16 years) thinking about this.