Our Gender Reveal Story

Well the time has finally come. I hit the 20 week mark and was able to find out the gender of our new little baby! Since this is the last baby we are going to have, we wanted to do something special for the reveal. For months I started planning out in my head every little detail of a gender reveal party, but a month before the party, we took a look at our finances and realized that we just could not fit a big party in our budget. We were going to Florida to visit family we hadn’t seen in over a year and it was either that or the party. We picked family.

So, as it got closer I tried figuring out something simple and fun we could still do to reveal the gender. I came up with a box full of balloons that my son, Adam could open to reveal the gender and surprise us all. I was excited! We planned to have my mom come up so she could be there with us, and also have my husband’s parents there via Skype. I knew my son would have a blast opening the box of balloons and I was so excited to see his face!

The original plan was for us to know what the gender was at the ultrasound and to surprise our family and friends. But a few days before the ultrasound I got a call from my friend. She wanted my husband and I to be surprised too and she had come up with a wonderful plan!

~~~~~

The morning of my ultrasound I was nervous and so excited to see my baby! They had told me to drink some juice before I came so that the baby would be awake so I drank two glasses of apple juice. Apparently that apple juice was a lot of sugar for little baby because when we got to the ultrasound baby was going crazy doing flips and moving all around. The funny thing was I couldn’t even feel it!

We got a 30 minute ultrasound because baby was moving so much and it was hard for the tech to see everything. I was more than a little worried we would go home without her being able to tell the gender, but she assured me that would not happen. Finally, toward the end of the ultrasound she told us not to look and she was able to get a good picture of the baby’s parts. She was very good at not revealing them to us!

I handed her a special envelope and after printing out all the pictures she took, she put the gender one in the envelope and gave us the rest of the pictures to look at. We took that special envelop home and after lunch I brought it to my friend’s house for safe-keeping! Later that day, she went and got balloons that matched the color of the gender specified in the envelope.

Everyone kept asking me how hard it was not to know or to look in the envelope. It was hard, but at the same time I wanted to be surprised. If I looked that would ruin all the fun! Thankfully we only had to wait one day to see what the gender was as the next day was the 4th of July!

My friend invited us over for a 4th of July cook-out and gender reveal of our little one! I didn’t invite any other people because I knew most would be busy with family that day, but a single airman from Jon’s work came to hang out with us since he didn’t have any family in town. My mom wasn’t able to make it up to visit, so we worked on getting my mom and Jon’s mom up on Skype on two different computers.

The reveal was supposed to happen at 3 pm, but due to some Skype difficulties we weren’t able to reveal for another 45 minutes! Finally we got it all set up and this is what happened:

My reaction apparently was priceless according to everyone on Facebook, but for several days I was still in shock about having a baby girl. We both had wanted a girl so bad since we already had a little boy, but I really didn’t think I would get what we wanted. I had been expecting a boy. Don’t get me wrong we still would have loved a little boy, but I am very excited to have a little girl to do pink dresses and bows with. It seriously has been a dream of mine to have a little girl ever since I was a little girl!

So my 4th of July was a day to remember, I am so thankful for my friend for wanting to surprise us and thankful for the technologies of Skype that allowed our families to see the reveal as well. God is amazing!