The Franke Family: Drum Roll Please...

Well, it has been a long awaited journey to find out the gender of our little one. We had our 20 week ultrasound on the 12th at 9:30am (I was actually a little over 21 weeks). The hospital is only about 15 minutes away from our house, so we were planning on leaving at 9. So we wake up at 8 to find that it has snowed over 6 inches. We decided that we should leave a little earlier, just incase traffic was bad. So we head out around 8:35, we would normally take the highway, but as we approached it, we saw that the highway was backed up to a complete standstill. So we decided to take some back-roads there, thinking that it would be quicker. Well, in theory this would have been a good idea, but we forgot the fact that people in Colorado seem to go brain dead when it snows. 9:10 comes around and we're still about 10 minutes away on a good day, so I decide to call the hospital and let them know we will probably be 15 minutes late and ask if we can still keep our appointment, and they told us to come and they would get us in. So we're on our way and traffic starts to pick up for a few blocks. A few minutes later we find ourselves in a complete standstill and see police lights on the street ahead of us. That's right, there's a car accident and we're just about 15 blocks away from the hospital, or about 5 minutes if things were going our way. So we make it past the accident with just minutes to spare before we are over 15 minutes late. When Nick tries to turn into the hospital parking lot, we hit a patch of ice and go sliding past the entrance, forcing us to continue up the road, U-turn, and drive back to the hospital. So Nick drops me on the sidewalk and I take off running-pregnant belly and all- to check in for our appointment. I burst into the office huffing and puffing and ask them to send my husband back to the ultrasound room when he gets there. So after an hour and 15 minute car ride (that should have taken 20 minutes at the most), we made it to our appointment and were so excited to see our baby and to finally be able to call it "he" or "she" instead of "it", and what does our little one decide to do?? CROSS IT'S LEGS FOR THE WHOLE ULTRASOUND!! Besides the frustration of the drive and the disappointment of not learning the gender, everything turned out great. It is so amazing to see the baby on the ultrasound. And once again the baby and I are both in good health, and the baby received a "perfect" on it's ultrasound results.

So after my rant on our day, there is good news. My mom had found this place that does 2D and 3D ultrasounds, so I called to see what they would say about finding out the gender, and they said that they guarantee being able to tell the gender. So I scheduled an appointment for Tuesday the 13th. Nick, my mom, and I went down, and it was this amazing little set up where they lay you down on this comfy bed and the ultrasound shows up on this big screen in front of you, and they have couches for your friends and family to sit on. So the technician gels up my tummy and sure enough the first shot he gets is of the baby from the bottom end, with the legs completely spread, and................

IT'S A GIRL!!!!

That's right, our little lady decided to not be so modest today, which we were grateful for. The tech was able to get some really cool pictures of her and we even got a picture CD and a DVD of the ultrasound set to music. He also offered us a 10% off discount if we want to come back and do a 3D ultrasound, which we probably will. It was such a great experience and so exciting after the stress of the previous day. Here is the website of the place we went to, it was an amazing experience and we highly recommend it! www.firstviewultrasound.com

So the baby is no longer an "it" and is now a "she" and now I can go crazy with decorating the nursery and buying little bows and dresses :)

Here are a few more pictures from the ultrasound.