Grow tall, sugarcane.

On Wednesday we had our Level II ultrasound . . . and we're having a girl!

I was actually against finding out the sex, I think out of general fear of finding out information before it was official. My husband wanted to know though, and after much discussion, we decided finding out would help us plan for things like a bris (well, that was really the only thing!). Knowing has been wonderful; knowing something about the baby inside me makes the whole pregnancy thing very real. I can picture us as a little family, with a girl in a sundress spinning in the yard. Or maybe a teenage girl with a mohawk fronting a punk band. I mean, a daughter.

So everything went well with the ultrasound, except for one very annoying discovery--a choroid plexus cyst. I feel stupid even writing about it, as readers who have had real problems with their pregnancies are probably rolling their eyes, or clicking away. Basically the cyst is a small amount of fluid on a non-thinking part of the brain. The cyst in itself is harmless, and in most cases it clears up before birth. But it is (or some would argue, once was) considered a soft marker for trisomy 18. The cyst is considered meaningless if no other markers are found (e.g., issues with the heart or digestive tract, clenched fists with overlapping fingers, cleft palate). And none were found. The baby is measuring ahead of gestational age, with some tight looking organs! My husband read what seemed like hundreds of scientific articles, all stating that an isolated CPC really meant nothing (our OB said the same thing). The fear though is that another marker could have been missed, although rationally I know the ultrasound was extremely thorough.

Still, knowing about it, no matter how meaningless it is, is something you can't unknow. I guess life is like that though--it's hard to be sure of anything. And rationally, we're sure that everything is just fine with our gal. We've just got to have faith (and not mention anything to my mother, who will break our zen).

After finding out the sex, I've had the chorus of this Missy Higgins song in my head:

So grow tall, sugarcane.
Eat the soil, drink the rain.

We're going to have a daughter. It's so freakin' amazing.