Peeking under the Hood: Jackson or Zoe?

Before we tell you the gender, and show you the pictures, here's the final tally:

Girl
Linda Cardonick; Tara/ Dylan Holman; Terri Springer; Jaimee Richardson; Jen Burbine; Tom Nagelberg; Brian Whalen; Sarah Remmert; Hal and Jen Lublin; Jessica Barron; Michael and Natascha Ledford; Debby and Jason Jordan; Amy Rogan; Amy and Eric Capozzoli

Boy
Stu Franks; Greg Bartle; Mike Burbine; Jay Proske; Lisa Brooks; Ann Shapiro; Beth Surgeon; Seth Shapiro; Mistie Roberts; Toni Benner; Tom Harding; Meredith Bennett; Jay Brinke; Tori Hull

One group is right...

So, gender is determined by the sperm. All eggs have the X chromosome, where there are sperm that carry the X- and others that carry the Y-chromosome.

The Y-chromosome-carrying sperm are said to:
* be faster and smaller than the X-chromosome carrying sperm.
* die faster than the X-chromosome-carrying sperm.

The X-chromosome-carrying sperm are said to:
* be slower than the Y-chromosome carrying sperm.
* be better able to withstand the acidic cervical environment before fertile cervical fluid is produced.

The joke is that the boy sperm take off, but like typical men, don't stop to ask for directions to where they're going, and so get lost along the way. The girl sperm are more patient, and stop to ask for directions to the egg - they may be slower, but they'll definitely get there. However, this is Jesse's child we're talking about, and if you know Jesse then you know that we call him "Map Jess" instead of MapQuest, due to his amazing directional skillz.

So of course it's a Jackson!!! In fact, the boy sperm probably asked my egg if it wanted a cup of coffee first, or a back rub. That's just how Jesse rolls.

The winner of the prize is Stu Franks, who continues his winning streak of guessing gender. He's now three for three.

We got to the doctor's office a little late, because of Thanksgiving traffic. The doctor has a policy that, if you're over 15 minutes late, they reserve the right to reschedule the appointment. We were too freaked out about missing the appointment, so Jesse dropped me off and then went to park the car. Turns out we were only about five minutes or so late.

I still had to drink a lot of water, but I knew what to expect. It still hurt, because I had to go to the bathroom so badly, but somehow knowing that we were getting to find out about the gender made it hurt less or something.

We got into the room, and the technician put the wand on my belly. We saw the baby right away, and he wasn't nearly as squirmy as the first time, although he definitely rolled over at one point and mooned us... The tech had to get a lot of different measurements before peeking at the bits, like measuring skull size, length, an image of all four chambers of the heart, lungs, and other important things. Then, she swung the wand around so we were looking up at the head from through the legs... I didn't even need the tech to tell us it was a boy - his little bits were quite evident without even pointing them out. As you can see from the picture below, though, they did print a little arrow pointing to his bits, and wrote "BOY!" on the picture. Jackson's butt is at the bottom right of the picture, with his legs on either side, and the bits in the middle - DEFINITELY a boy!



Better yet, the baby's heart rate and size (14.5 oz) is perfect, and all of his measurements are on track. The results of the tests for spinal defects, brain defects, and Down's Syndrome all came back negative as well. And, I'm feeling Jackson kick all the time now.

After we processed the excitement of actually knowing, we realized that very little about our parenting is going to change... boy or girl, we were going to introduce the baby to Jesse's Kung Fu, video games, Indiana Jones, Star Wars, theater, sports, dancing, music... the baby's room was always going to be an "Under the Sea" theme regardless of gender... even the middle name, Francis/Frances was going to be the same. I have to admit, a part of me will miss the fun of buying frilly girl dresses, but it's going to be awesome buying tiny suits and ties, or a baby leather jacket...

Plus, as a wise man once said, with a boy, you only need to worry about one penis. With a girl, you have to worry about them all!

More pictures:

Jackson trying to suck his thumb... too cute!













Jackson, just chillin' in the womb.















Close-up of Jackson's face... it looks like he's got my button nose, thank goodness!