She's a Girl!

Valerie and I were at the hospital this past Thursday. She and I were sitting in the dark room with our ultra-sound technician, watching technology at perhaps its best. We were watching our little baby dance around in mom's stomach. We looked at the four chambers of her heart. We looked at their little kidneys, at the little brain. The little baby was just dancing around inside, almost to music. Valerie couldn't stop laughing until she cried. She was laughing so much that I thought that something might be wrong or funny that I wasn't noticing--and then I smiled at my wife laughing at our little baby.

Our ultra-sound tech asked us if we wanted to know the sex of our baby. We said yes. Initially, I didn't want to know until the day of the birth--but Valerie wanted to know. She said that she didn't want the baby to have all yellow and green clothing.

Traci, I think was her name, asked me what my name was. She said that she usually tries to put a name together that is derived from both the father's and mother's name. I told her my name was Clinton. She thought for about 30 seconds, and finally she said that she couldn't come up with a name using our two names to tell us the sex of our baby. In retrospect, I can understand--I mean, what kind of name would "Clalerie" or "Valon" or "Valerinton"--you get the picture. Finally, Traci found a good shot, and said, "Well, you are having a little girl." We looked, and sure enough, we were having a little girl. That is when Valerie started crying. I was excited. I am excited to have a little girl first. Some of my friends have said that having a little girl first will ruin me as it ruined them. I can imagine just spoiling this little girl and giving in to her cute, conniving smile already. I think that I will have a tendency to be an overprotective father--especially with a little girl. With God's grace, we are having a little baby girl!