Announcement #5: Gender Reveal

Well, we've promised this announcement for some time now.

When we left America we were a bit too early in the pregnancy to know the gender. We thought that might mean that we wouldn't get to know the gender, since it is not common for doctors here to reveal the gender to the parents. (The main reason is the number of female babies who would be aborted). In fact, at most hospitals, the ultrasound screen is positioned in a way that the mom can't see it and most hospitals won't let fathers accompany the mother to the ultrasound room.

However, our first prenatal check up once we returned to China was performed at an international hospital in Tianjin. They allowed James to accompany me and had a large screen we could both see. We decided to ask if they would tell us the gender. Sometimes not all the rules apply to us as foreigners so if we could play the "foreigner card" in this situation, we wanted to.

But, the doctor performing the ultrasound said she couldn't tell us. So there you have it. No gender reveal.

JUST KIDDING!

She told us she couldn't tell us, but suddenly, she started dropping all kinds of hints. OH, for this story to make more sense you need to know that "he" and "she" are written differently but pronounced the same in Chinese. You also need to know that most Chinese people think baby girls look like their father and baby boys look like their mother.

She would say, "ta" (he/she) is very pretty. We didn't get it yet. Then she asked us who our other girls looked like. Then she said, "This one looks like dad, too." We (James and I) started exchanging questioning glances with each other. "Ta" will look good in a skirt. AH HA! We got it. She couldn't directly tell us the gender, but we realized she was dropping us every hint she could to let us know this baby is Judd girl #3!

So there you have it. The long version of the story to simply say.....She's a girl!