Baby #2 and How We Bungled Our Own Gender Reveal

Baby #2 and How We Bungled Our Own Gender Reveal

I started to write a blog post / update about my pregnancy so far and meant to include some basic info and highlights around what it’s been like this time around. I ended up going down a rabbit hole of how it’s felt being pregnant during COVID-19 (and it turned into a whole other story that continues to be a rollercoaster of emotions.) So for today I wanted to keep things a bit lighter and share a funny story about how we found out the gender of our babe! 

A little bit of backstory is going to be important here. When I was pregnant with my son, Shepard, we decided to do the genetic testing at 8 or 9 weeks. For those of you who aren’t familiar, along with that blood test, they can run it to find out the gender, and so we opted in for that. Our doctor told us once the results were in, the office would call us and we could come and pick up an envelope that held the gender results. Well the call came, we went in and picked up the envelope, and went on our merry way to find out that our firstborn would be a boy. 

This time around – same doctor, same clinic, same blood work, different process to find out the results (due to COVID). Instead of a hard copy we would pick up, my doctor told me that everything would be loaded into an online portal – so once the results were in, I could log in and then there would be a button to click to find out what we were having. Seemed super easy and fool proof. 🙂 

About a week went by and Eric urged me to log into our portal to check and see if our results were in. “The doctor will call us first,” I told him. “Just check!” he said. “Maybe they haven’t had a chance to call us yet!” 

So, I entered my email into the site and clicked “Forgot Password” like they told me to do because I hadn’t ever logged into this portal before. I eventually made my way to the homepage where a big button said “Click Here for Your Results” and I excitedly told my husband – “Oh my gosh you were right, results are ready!” I handed him my phone because just like with Shepard, we agreed that he would be the one to read the results out loud. Something about me finding out we were pregnant first makes him want to be the first to know the gender, so I let him have it 🙂 

We read the genetic results first, and then after that you can scroll down to the gender portion, where there’s another button to read the specific gender results. He clicked that button and immediately got a big smile on his face. “It’s a boy!” he exclaimed! We cheered, hugged each other, told Shep he was having a brother (filmed the whole thing) and I instantly began imagining my life as a #boymom. It goes without saying, we were happy either way. In the spirit of transparency, I will admit that I felt a little pang at the realization that I wasn’t ever going to have a daughter. Whenever I’ve imagined my life and having children, I’ve always pictured myself having a daughter and all of the things we would do together, all the things I would teach her. So it’s not that I was disappointed that this child was a boy, but since we know we only want to have two kids, I had to sort of reset that hope / expectation of having a daughter of my own. 

About an hour later, Shep and I were cuddling in my bed watching Toy Story 3 for the 250th time before bed and I found myself re-reading the full report on my phone. We had seen what I’d call the “overview” or “highlights” of all the results but I hadn’t yet given the whole thing my full attention. As I was reading the full document I noticed that the “Date Tested” was marked as 2017. “Hmm that’s odd,” I thought. It must be a typo. But then after doing some mental math in my head, I realized that these were Shepard’s results! The boy we were having…we already had – and he was laying right next to me! 

In all fairness, we didn’t even know that Shep’s results had ever been loaded into this portal. The message we had clicked on (even though it was from 2017) was still marked as unread, so it looked brand new. It was such a silly mistake – and one we’re still laughing about today. 

The next day the doctor’s office called, said that our *current* results were in, and that we were good to check them. “Let’s try this again,” I thought in my mind. We logged in and there were now two “Click Here to View your Results” buttons. One for Shep, and now one for the new baby…

I’ll cut straight to the chase – she’s a girl! We’re really excited and can’t wait for her to join the fam in November. We call her our baby “sissy” when we talk about her to Shep – which is also what we call our dog, Lucy, so I’m fairly certain Shep thinks he’s getting a new puppy…but we’ll cross that bridge when we get there. 

Being pregnant in 2020 has been interesting to say the least, but we feel extremely blessed and excited to welcome her in just a couple of months. 

Leave us a comment below if you’ve had any funny gender reveal stories – we’d love to hear them! 

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