Zee cat appears to bee, how you say, out of zee bag

So we were waiting. Rather patiently I might add. At least I was being patient about it.

The plan was that we were going to wait to find out the sex of the baby until such time as its birth took place and it came out into the world to play.

We told our families we didn't want to know. We told our doctor. We told the ultrasound technician named Steve. Steve was nice enough to turn the monitor away from us when he got to that part of the ultrasound where they look to see if the bun in mama's oven will soon be clad in heaps and heaps of blue or gobs and gobs of unholy shades of pink. I wonder if the person who declared pink to be the new black meant to include baby girl clothes.

So Steve told us that the sex of the baby would be obvious on the videotape of the ultrasound that they made for us. Not obvious in the "look, there's its wee-wee" kind of way, but rather, because Steve typed out little descriptions for each new baby body sight discovered. Foot. Hand. Spine. Head. Oh look at the little head, it's gonna look so cute in one of those baby caps!

So we didn't watch it. Because we were waiting. Patiently.

Except my wife's patience, for whatever reason, be it the strain from the various discomforts of pregnancy or perhaps hearing all the other ladies at her yoga for pregnant moms class talk about the boy or girl they were carrying, well, it began to falter. She wanted to watch the tape.

So after numerous requests, I finally hauled out ye olde VCR and hooked it up in place of the Play Station, and in went the tape.

Now we knew that the tape contained the answer regarding the sex of the baby. We hadn't forgotten. The plan was that I would hide my eyes, Ash would know, and she would not tell me. And it would've worked too if it weren't for those meddling kids! Who am I kidding, no it wouldn't have. Except that's not how I found out.

So the tape's rolling. The baby's on screen. All the various labels that we remembered are appearing next to baby's image. Head. Spine. Foot. You name it. I covered my eyes. The problem was that I didn't cover my ears.

For at that moment, Ashley's brother walked into the room, looked at the screen, and read out loud the label that Steve the technician had typed.

I was a bit upset.

I left the room.

I might have slammed a door on my way out.

But even in the middle of being angry, I was happy, and I knew I would be over it pretty quick. Hell, how could I stay mad? I had wanted it be a surprise, sure, but much more than that I wanted the baby to be healthy, and beyond the baby's boy or girl status, the ultrasound had also concluded that it was indeed healthy. I never thought I'd be so happy to hear the word "normal" repeated over and over again so many times.

So one bright side is that we at least know what kind of baby clothes to buy. You would not believe how incredibly gender specific baby clothes are. I guess big-people clothes are too.

Oh, so that label that the technician typed, the one I mentioned earlier. I guess maybe if you're reading this and you know me, you might be a wee bit curious about that. Well I'll tell you, on the screen, he drew an arrow to a little spot in the baby's pelvic bone. And up above it, he typed "Little Man."