mrs. my-last-name-here, you have a lovely daughter

Yes, it's true! A female! The ultrasound tech only did one measurement (the abdomen, which she pronounced perfect, of course) before she got to the good stuff; she calmly announced that this baby was a little girl. I think both of us were surprised - I mean, duh, we knew that this was one of the two options, but still, when you've been saying he/his/boy/son for over four years, it takes some getting used to, all these female identifiers. She did move on and measure everything else and the placenta location - all is well in every area.

Now to your questions: Yes, we have a name picked. And sorry, it's a secret until she emerges from within. It's not bizarre, but it's not terribly common these days either - sort of like Henry was five years ago when we picked that one. Now everybody's naming their kid Henry. Maybe we'll begin the resurgence of this name, too. For now, I'll refer to her as Bertha. Other names suggested have been: Matilda, Shaniqua, Cherry, Andrea (nice try, sissa), and all my girl youth group members have offered their own names, of course. I will tell you that Bertha's real name is made up of family names, and that it's a gorgeous name.

Henry was funny when he heard the news. He was perfectly pleasant about it, even when he said that he thought it was supposed to be a boy baby. He was more tickled by the mouse arrow the tech left on the screen for the picture he looked at. He did say one funny comment though - "Now I'll have a girlfriend!" Ay yi yi.

Thanks for all the sweet comments, everybody. It's nice to know at least 7 people are reading. I'll be away this weekend so I won't get to read or post, but hopefully I'll be much more relaxed than I've been the last 2 weeks.

Here's two of the pictures - the tech was AWESOME and turned on the 3D so we could get a look at her face, which she did not have to do, especially since we weren't paying extra. The first one is a regular 2D profile, with little Bertha showing us her gang affiliation. The second is our first view of her beautiful self, and I think she looks quite like her big brother.