Spacefem's Weekly Wikipedia Pregnancy Blog: 18 weeks pregnant

So my aunts had this silly pencil test and told me I was having a boy. I felt like I was having a boy, I live in a world surrounded by men, I had boy dreams, my mom had boy dreams. And then what happened? The ultrasound tech thinks it's a girl. And when I say "think", I mean "she was pretty sure". Even made us a printed photo of a crotch-looking shot with text saying "IT'S A GIRL!"

I was in shock! I mean seriously, I'd really gotten in a mental state that we were going to see some boy parts, and when she told us and I asked if she was SURE I felt really bad for even making a big deal about it, or thinking about it period. Why did I ever want a girl, or a boy? What do I think I'm getting with either one?

I've never been a fan of community posts referring to "team blue!" or "team pink!". Is there a law that because a baby is coming equipped with a vagina, she's going to love pink? What do we think these organs are telling us about the people we're making? And just to be clear... sex and gender are different. At any time our little ones might not be so interested in equating his/her sex with a pre-determined society-accepted role.

The only real reason I'm glad we learned our baby was a girl is that referring to her as "she" has been more comforting and personal then "it". That's a defect of the english language.

But the rest of the ultrasound was lovely and fun, the pictures on a video screen turn out much better than still images, you can really make things out better. Our baby has all the parts I'd hoped for... legs, arms, toes, a brain, ears, eyes, stomach, heart with four chambers (so it's not an amphibian!). Her mouth was moving a lot, like she was chewing... or (I'm afraid) practicing to do a lot of mouth-running later in life. I thought she looked kinda leggy. The tech said she was measuring a little big... about what a 20W fetus would, but I'm only at 19W, she said that wasn't a huge deal but the baby probably won't be born small. I figured as much.

Post-pregnancy update: The baby was eventually born about two days from her due date and she was 7 lbs 4 oz. I realize I did a lot of studies about due date accuracy and how it's pretty close... I did NOT study early ultrasound size predicting accuracy. Their "not small" was silly. I didn't get any more ultrasounds, but just... don't freak out too much if you get told something like that.