We Know the Sexes!

The holidays are over and it’s time for an update.

Our surrogate flew out to visit us from California for four days the week before Christmas. It was exciting to get to know her better and we did our best to make her feel at home and like a part of our family. She had never been to our city, so we gave her the tour, took her out to dinner two nights and one night we all worked together to prepare a home-cooked meal. She also went with us on a shopping trip to Babies R Us, giving us pointers on things to get and what’s really unnecessary. It sounds like first time parents usually buy more than they need and end up giving many things away. Since she’s already a parent, any advice she had was very welcome. She also attended our neighborhood Christmas party and met many of our neighbors and their kids/babies. I did a little baby sitting for a while to give a friend time to eat and socialize at the party, so hopefully our surrogate got a chance to feel comfortable with us becoming parents.

Christmas was rather uneventful at our house as I caught a nasty cold. I haven’t had a cold or flu in years, so I’m not happy with this! We spent New Year’s Eve at our neighbor’s house with several other couples, where I lost my voice during a round of Cranium. I still don’t have it back completely, but don’t really feel bad at this point.

And now on to the exciting news! Our surrogate went to the doctor on New Year’s Eve for a 4-D ultrasound to find out the sexes of the babies. They’re also sending us a DVD so we can see their faces and see them actually moving around. So the news is, we’ve got two boys! Nick and our surrogate both thought it was two boys, and I was expecting a boy and a girl. I’m not sure why I didn’t think about the possibility of two girls, but boys it is. We were hoping for one of each, but we’re happy with what we’ve got. So far we have one boy’s name picked out, but haven’t decided on the second. We’re planning on painting the nursery soon, now that we know we can go with a design for boys. The room next door to the nursery, currently a guest room, will become one of the boys’ rooms once we decide it’s time to split them up. It’s already a grey/blue color, so all we’ll need to do is get rid of the bed in that room. Neighbors down the street with 8 month old twins already split them up into separate rooms because one keeps the other one awake, so it’s hard to say when we’ll need the second room.

The next milestone will be testing for birth defects next week. I’m not too worried about it and don’t expect anything, but I would want to know well in advance of any issues and be prepared.

Happy New Year!