Update: It's a girl! A hyperactive one at that.

It took over an hour for the ultrasound tech to get a clear picture of her, and even then she wasn't sure, so she asked a more experienced tech to help her out. Every time the ultrasound baton came close to getting a great picture, the baby would be like "Psych!" and roll/swim away. But we finally got some great pictures, and it's most definitely a girl.

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No, seriously.

I'm having a baby, and I'm due December 30th.

Well, that's the important part. Feel free to skip the rest, since I'm just going to tell you how I found out.

So yesterday, I went in for my first ob/gyn appointment with a new doctor (basically switched my old Kaiser Permanente doctor for one that practices closer to where I live). Basic, totally routine appointment.

I get there, she preps and does her thing with that duck-billed shaped...thing, and pretty much finds a head. Then she starts feeling on my stomach, asks me strange questions, and runs out to find an available sonogram machine, because she didn't reserve one for my appointment. Then she rushes back in with this big ass thing that looks like it's from the 1980s, jellies my stomach, and suddenly I'm looking at a baby on the screen. And not some tiny grape of a thing.

Apparently, I'm 22 weeks along. I'm sure you're thinking, "How in the HELL did you go five months without realizing it?" I'm asking myself the same thing. But my pregnancy so far has been so laidback: no weird cravings, no excessive tiredness beyond work-related tiredness, and I assumed my period all but disappeared due to new work stress (it's happened before). All my clothes still fit. I pretty much look like I'm having a bloaty day.

So the doctor had the sonogram on me, and she kept going back and forth trying to find a gender. She ended up taking five pictures, and it turns out this baby is Starfox (thank my boyfriend for that!) because it did a barrel roll and we couldn't get a gender, especially on such an old machine. I have five pictures in succession showing my baby doing a barrel roll! I told Ian, and the first thing we thought (being Metalocalypse fans--you guys should watch the show), "Dude, that's so metal."

I was in COMPLETE SHOCK. Seriously, how many people go in for a routine doctor's appointment only to find out their five months pregnant?!

After that, I got in my car and just started bawling from the shock, the excitement, the fear, everything. It was the middle of the day, so Ian was working and couldn't answer his phone, so I texted him. My mom can't answer her phone at work either, so I left her a message to call me. All that was left was my 16-year-old brother on his last day of summer vacation, and I practically begged him to wait till I got there before going out with his friends. He's pretty excited to be an uncle.

Ian was stunned. Apparently everyone at his work thought his entire family died or something by the way he was acting, and the fact that he immediately requested today off from work. My mother just screamed, she's so happy to be a grandmother. Like any good grandma, she's also worried about our finances, but she's already planning a shopping trip and expanding our cottage (we live behind her in a separate and much smaller house). My mother's boyfriend is SO HAPPY. But he just loves babies in general, he's got like five grandkids already. Mom was so excited she asked to tell my grandmother, I told her to go ahead. So she told Grandma, and Grandma's telling everyone else.

So today, I have another appointment, lots of lab work to be done, and I get to have a better sonogram so I'll find out the gender. Ian and I have been throwing around ideas for names. We've decided it will have a Japanese middle name to celebrate Ian's roots (he's Japanese and Polish). Are there Japanese baby name dictionaries around?

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IN OTHER NEWS, when I told my mother about the new baby, she was actually in the middle of reviewing our family tree that Uncle Bob had been working on for years, dating back to Grandma's great-grandfather. And guess what? He was a plantation owner, and he had a baby with one of his slaves. That baby, my grandma's grandpa, grew up to be a blue-eyed Buffalo Soldier. HOW AWESOME IS THAT?? We even have a picture! And it certainly explains why half of our relatives from the Philippines have Southern sounding names--my grandmother herself is Daisy Mae, her mother is Cora Belle. The rest of the names sound Spanish.

Now we're even more excited because we're going to add a new name to the family tree. Just gotta figure out the name...

The day was just COMPLETELY UNBELIEVABLE.

I'll update later today with a gender.