so.completely.wrong.

So our trip to the doctor while in KM was exciting and surprising all at once. If I've never explained it to you before let me start out with this...It is against the law for doctors to let the parents know a baby's gender before birth. This comes from the implementation of the one child policy that started in 1978-1980. Each family is allowed to have one child with a few exceptions that allow a family to have two (living in a village, being in a minority group, etc). Traditionally boys are regarded as the favored sex for children, as has been in many cultures, so with this policy many couples would find out they were having a girl and abort their child in order to give themselves a chance for a son. With this the population of men was beginning to grow and of women to decline. This causes some serious society issues. So therefor to prevent aborting so many girl babies the government decided to not give the parents the option to find out. So now that I've given that history lesson you may understand why were were so uncertain yet hopeful we would be able to find out if we were having a girl or a boy.

We went to an International Hospital in KM that works with many foreigners and is rumored to tell foreign parents the gender of their child. This is also our best option for a thorough ultra sound. We wanted to take a trip anyway and this was the perfect time to have the check up and our Anniversary getaway. We had the normal things done (urinalysis and blood pressure both ok) and then on to the ultra sound. We had a nurse that helped us through the whole process to translate and take us to where we needed to go. She and the u/s tech both agreed to tell us the gender if we were able to see. Of course she started with the head and heart and all that. The baby was active and healthy and looked great. As she moved down the body we noticed that he was all curled up and being modest. So we didn't get a full on view but from looking up through the legs and bottom we were able to see what surely looked like little boy parts sticking out (knowing that if it was a girl nothing would be 'sticking out'). The nurse and the tech both gave us pretty strong affirmative for a little boy without being able to see the best view.

I have to admit that I was shocked and disappointed. Of course with the disappointment I felt guilty but I just couldn't help how I was feeling. We were all so certain it was a girl. Stan was in shock also but of course he was feeling like 'THE MAN' with producing yet another male offspring (apparently that male dominated mind set is not unique to the Chinese even now :). I went through the evening between thoughts of disbelief and amazement. I just couldn't wrap my brain around being the mother of three boys. I had trouble sleeping that night--a lot due to the bed being so hard that I could not get comfortable with my big belly and some to do with a mind running wild. I woke up early with a heavy heart. I knew my selfish thoughts were the cause. I laid there and talked to FATHER. I asked HIM to give me a heart of joy and happiness for being the mother of boys. I asked HIM to help me to feel thankful for healthy wonderful children. I asked HIM to prepare me to raise strong men that loved HIM more than anything. And I thanked HIM for knowing me better than I know myself and trusting me to raise HIS beautiful boys.

I have felt fine ever since then. I still feel amazed at times that I will have three boys but not in a disappointed way. For many reasons, some to do with the whole one child policy that I talked of before, we are not sure if we will have any more children. I've already been asked a couple of times if we will try again for a girl. The answer is I don't know if we will have another child. But my thoughts have been that we would not have another child for the purpose to have a girl but for the purpose that we felt FATHER was asking us to parent another of HIS creations. We have talked about adopting and that is still an option for us, knowing that if we do we could choose to adopt a little girl. We simply don't know what the future holds for our family.

Just now Kirby came and interrupted me so that I could have a sword fight with him. I'm happy to know that I have many years of sword fights, trains, cars and all the other fun things that boys love. I get to watch three (at least) boys grow into young men and eventually move on to begin families of their own. This is what being a mother is all about!

Sometimes it's not so bad to be so.completely.wrong.

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