The Bitter Family Blog: July 2008

This was seriously one of the funnest parties! Just seeing everyone dressed in their best 80's clothes was fun. The Ballards are moving this week to LA for Annie to go to film school at USC. They wanted to go out with a RAD bang! I'm so sad they're moving, they are soooo fun to hang with. They went all out for the party: hiring a couple hot bartenders, and a DJ to keep the 80's tracks rolling.

Dave and I had to go to the Goodwill to get some 80's inspiration. Dave ended up with a Marty McFly style "life preserver" vest, so he went as the 80's Back to the Future star. I just did my best to hide the prego belly under a huge (3XL) cut up sweatshirt, off the shoulder of course. Add some nasty leggings and fingerless gloves, an obnoxious hairbow, too much makeup and I'm an 80's rock star wannabe! The party had a few hairband members (Matt & Corey), some preppys (Mark & Ben), one hot Olivia Newton-John (Rachel), a few bodacious Prom Queens (Tiffani, Amy, & Emily), a Valley girl crew (Tiffany, me, Annie, Keri, Stephanie, Mrs. Macy...)... and more! All the 80's reminiscing made me want to rent all the old John Hughes movies I grew up on: Pretty in Pink, Sixteen Candles, The Breakfast Club, Some Kind of Wonderful, Better off Dead.... I think I'll have to have an 80's movie night....! Wanna come?

So, this has been an interesting and confusing last couple of days. For those of you who don't already know... I'm pregnant. We're expecting our fifth child in the middle of December. I'm now 17 weeks along and finally getting over some of the crappy phase. Many of our friends have taken this DNA gender detection test to find out the gender of the baby as early as 8 weeks into your pregnancy. It's a little pricey but nice if you're not too patient and like planning far in advance. It's supposedly "more accurate than an ultrasound" so people say. My mom got pretty excited about wanting to know the gender early to she convinced us to do it. With her help we completed to test kit and sent in my blood sample, paid an extra $27. to over-night it by Fed-ex. That was a Wednesday somewhere around my 10th week I think. I called and bugged the staff at the lab about when I would get my results, I wanted to find out the Friday before Memorial Day so I wouldn't have to wait until Tuesday. I waited on pins and needles all day and around 2pm I got a call from the lab that I could check my results online. I nervously punched in my secret codes and VOILA! My results were there!

"Congratulations! You are likely to be expecting a baby girl. Your Baby Gender Mentor Test result is female, which means that only female fetal genetic materials were present in your blood at the time that you took the Test. This means that you are likely carrying one or more baby girls. "

Okay! After giving birth to 4 wonderful boys, this was a bit of a shock, but none the less exciting! I began to cry a bit ... out of shock, gratitude, happiness, and more shock! I called Dave and tearfully told him the result, needless to say he was slightly shocked as well. (He's so manly he didn't think he could produce a girl!) I proceeded to call a few friends who were also waiting to hear my results.

Since then, I've not really let myself get too wrapped up in the "girl" thing. I honestly just couldn't believe it was possible. Everyone, especially those who had previously taken the test and received correct results, couldn't believe I wasn't completely sure of my results. I thought, perhaps it's just because it's in my nature to prepare myself for the worst. It just never felt safe giving into the idea that I was actually carrying a baby girl. I bought a couple cute pink things and began searching for girl names, but not much else. I decided I would feel more secure once I had an ultrasound and saw for myself that the baby was indeed a girl.

I scheduled a social ultrasound for this last Saturday the 12th. I thought it would be fun to bring all the kids and have my mom be there to see it. Really, I just wanted to validate my previous test results so I could give myself permission to enjoy the idea of expecting a girl. So I lay down on the table ready to hear whether we wasted $250 on a DNA test or whether it was right. It was a bit loud in the room with all the boys laughing at how the baby looked like a skeleton or a peanut. The technician quietly said, "It looks to me like it's a boy.." He asked me to roll over to see if he could get a different view. He proceeded to point out 3-4 times that it looked like it was indeed a boy.

I knew it. I really knew it. Maybe the Spirit had been preparing me all along not to get too excited about it being a girl because it wasn't one. No crying on my part, or Dave's for that matter (he's half robot). Mason got a bit teary eyed, he wanted a baby sister so bad. I tried to joke with him that he really wouldn't want a baby sister with a "wee-wee", that made him laugh and kind of get over it.

I've since had a hard time not thinking about it. I keep telling everyone that I'm fine. I can smile and laugh at the irony of it all. No one that I know that has taken the DNA test has ever received the wrong results. How ironic that a mother of 4 boys would be falsly told she was having a girl on her last pregnancy. I've just been reminding myself that Heavenly Father has a plan for me and he has great reason for giving me the children he has. There is a reason I'm meant to be a mother of all boys. Only he knows that reason. I feel so blessed that I have been able to bear healthy babies at all, a task which some never have to chance to do. I am so grateful for all that I've been blessed with and put my faith in the Lord that I know he has a plan for me and my family. Sometimes it takes experiences like this to remind me that those inconsequential things don't really matter, which gender your children are. What matters is that they are healthy and happy.

So the moral? Don't waste your money on dumb early gender determination tests/scans, just prepare for a healthy baby and enjoy the blessings.....