We're having a BOY!!!

It's official we're having a boy!!

My uncle Steve's brother Greg Devore was so nice to come in on a Saturday and give us an ultrasound. We made the trip to Pasadena to see him, first spending the night at my uncle Danny's house in Santa Monica. I have to be honest I was convinced that I was having a girl and REALLY wanted one because on my side of the family there are soon to be 6 grandkids, 5 of which will now be boys! On Brian's side there are 7 grandkids and 6 of them are boys! Brian thought I was having a boy and when it turned out he was right he was so sweet and tried to not make me feel bad, I even had to tell him to let his excitement show. I think he thought I would be a lot more upset when finding out but I was just so excited to finally know for sure what we are having! I'm getting more and more excited and even though I really wanted a girl I've always said I wanted a boy first so that our kids can always have an older brother, even though I did want a girl right now. My dad came with us and that was a really fun experience to have him there too.

This is the 4D ultrasound, we were just amazed at the clarity! You can see he's smiling a little and his arms are tucked beneath his head. We were so surprised at the difference between 2D, 3D and 4D.

This is pretty much the same picture but in 3D.

And the 2D silhouette of the baby. You can tell where his eyes, nose and mouth are in this one and even though its not as clear I still love it so much!

I believe this one is 3D and the reason I like this one so much is because you can see his crossed arms in front of his face and even make out each individual finger and knuckle.

This one you can see how he's grabbing his shoulder a little better. It looks like that bulge is his shoulder but its actually his hand and if you look close you can see the fingers again.

When Greg told us it was a boy he would use the term "little rocket" a lot which we thought was hilarious!!

I know there's so many of these but I love how you can see his little feet in this one!

I was really grateful to Greg because while doing the ultrasound he found 2 things: One was a cyst on the brain that occurs in about 1% of pregnancies. He was really great at explaining to us that there was a time when people thought that that was a sign of Down Syndrome, but that currently there is no medical proof of that and there was no further evidence that our boy would have it. The other was that he had a calcium deposit in the heart. Once again this happens in about 1% of pregnancies, and while it used to cause alarm they now know that while it will be there for the rest of the pregnancy, it will stay the exact same size even as the baby grows and will soon disappear. We were so happy to see him because we really felt that he knew what he was talking about and maybe if we had seen another doctor and he'd have found that he might have made us panic about it. I asked if it was just a coincidence that our baby had both those things and he said yes and that he had often seen babies with that and they almost always turned out healthy. He said that he checked for numerous other signs of birth defect and found none and that our baby was perfectly healthy! He also said that our baby had long arms and legs, something that made Brian very happy and proud because I know he immediately thought of the little athlete he'll turn out to be, and that based on his development the due date will be between June 10th-16th.

So we especially loved going to Greg because he was nice enough to make a movie out of the ultrasound so we have the whole thing on DVD. The real one is about 15 minutes long so we shortened it down to the highlights so now its only about 4 minutes. Here's the breakdown of whats going on because I know its hard to understand ultrasounds, so I'll let you know whats going on between each "cut":

First it shows the brain (theres a dark spot that you might be able to see thats the cyst).

Then the legs and you can especially see the leg bones.

Then if you can make out the face, you can see his hands are in front of his face.

The next cut you can see his beating heart.

Then there's his feet, and he even kind of kicks them at one point. There's a still photo of it up at the top so this is just before he printed out the picture of the feet.

Then it shows his silhouette.

The next cut you can see his skeleton, and throughout the video you might find his ribcage and spine a couple times.

Again you can see his skeleton, and you can see his arms are crossed in front of his face, almost like their tucked in under his head.

Next is the 4D part of the video, and you see the still shot of his face that is up at the top.

The next cut is my favorite because you can see him rubbing his eye, and it looks like he waving to you!

Then you can see his "little rocket" and the mouse is rolling over it.

Next you can see his heart beating again and there's a little white dot you might be able to see where the calcium deposit is.

The last cut you can really see his ribcage and spine, his head starts out on the left.