Today was our 10-week ultrasound. We flew to Atlanta on Saturday and drove to Chattanooga, TN yesterday so that we could meet the OB-GYN, spend a little more time with B., and see our baby live on the fetal monitor. We went to dinner on Sunday evening with B. and her family and then met her the next morning at the doctor's office.

Okay, I’m totally burying the lede: It’s a girl!!

That’s right. Alberto has some exchanges to make because we are not having a boy, we are having a girl. While we were watching the fetus moving around on the ultrasound, we kept using the pronoun “he” to describe what we were seeing. The OB broke into our conversation and said, “What’s all this ‘he’ business?” (The OB is kind of a character. Picture Octavia Spencer’s character from The Help. Then picture her delivering your baby.) “That is not a boy. That is a GIRL. See this right here, that’s a VAGINA.” (She said it vah-JINE-uh.)

I immediately started laughing. I’ve always heard that God laughs in the face of your best laid plans. I have never once pictured Alberto and me with a baby girl. But that’s okay because I am nothing but excited about this development. I was inexplicably excited, actually. I think the shock made it more real somehow. It shook me out of my vision of how this process would unfold and that made it more vivid.

I’m a little perturbed that the OB didn’t admit her error. She seemed to not understand why we assumed it was a boy. Honey, we got that information from you! We didn’t just come up with it in our sleep. I can’t see anything on those grey, ultrasound photographs; I was not about to speculate about parts and organs.

All the way back to the airport in Atlanta Alberto kept saying, “A girl…” quietly, under his breath. We definitely need to reorient. And to get started on those returns.