Monday was a pretty cool day. We found out just what's swimming around inside Mrs Mac's tummy. We bucked convention and actually found out the sex of our unborn baby.

I work for a large multinational software company in the city of Perth, Western Australia. I'm a software engineer. Mrs Mac is a primary school teacher at a private school a bit closer to our home in the northern suburbs of Perth. These are details which are not particularly going anywhere at this point, but it just seemed strange saying "My wife picked me up from work at 10:30am..." when there was no actual context. Like I say, it'll all become clear over time.

For the second monday morning in a row, I got to work and got a text message on my phone delivering happy news from friends announcing the birth of brand new baby girls. Note that they weren't the same friends two weeks in a row. You would have read about that somewhere if that were the case. Anyway, so two different couples we know had baby girls a week apart. When I got in the car having been picked up by Mrs Mac, the regularity of our friends' babies at the moment, and in particular the fact that so many of our friends have had baby girls in the past year or two, set our thoughts racing and we were just desperate to find out.

I guess to be completely honest, although like most new parents we have the attitude that as long as our baby is healthy, then we're happy etc, we've both said we were leaning towards a tiny wee girl if we absolutely had to have a preference. The fact that we told each other that we had a feeling it was a little boy in there may have been just a mental covering of all bases, and we'd acknowledged this fact to each other too - bottom line, we had no idea and were desperate to find out.

Most couples these days seem to not want to find out the sex of their child until it's born. No disrespect to anyone in this situation who has this particular view, but for us we decided that there was no point in actively deciding to not know just about the only thing you can know at this point. Mrs M also has the opinion that it probably brings the father into the situation a bit more closely (because the mother has a natural closeness to the situation due to obvious physical factors), and I appreciate this.

Anyway, we got to the place where we were having the scan. The 20-week scan is what they call a 4-D scan. I'm not exactly sure what the fourth dimension is in this respect, so if you do, let me know. Three dimensions was enough anyway, and it was fantastic to see the little bugger moving around so much.

The staff at the scan place are amazing. The main guy is Dr Anthony Murphy, although there are other staff who seem to do a lot of the legwork. Both times we've been there (12 weeks and now at 20 weeks), the scan has been actually performed by someone else, and these other staff have been excellent. Clearly very smart cookies, all of them. Dr Murphy comes in part the way through the scan and gives his opinion too. He has a fantastic bedside (or scan-table-side) manner - very friendly and knowledgeable.

The lady (I think her name was Michelle) performing the scan this time was checking out everything for us. They checked the brain, heart and other body parts for size and function, as well as looked for conditions which might show up at this stage like spina bifida, club foot, cleft palate, and a few others. We told Michelle that we wanted to know the sex, and she had a bit of a look early on, but our baby wasn't cooperating. Getting all shy for the cameras, it was.

Then a bit later in the scan, she just oh-so-casually goes "Oh, okay, there's a better look. And....yep...it's a little girl". The comment seemed to come out of nowhere and it just caught both of us so much by surprise! It was weird: as soon as she said it, this huge wave of emotion came over both Mrs M and me, and we got a bit teary with the overwhelming happiness just for a second. Looking back, I reckon it would have been exactly the same reaction had the announcement been the other way, because it was just such a huge jump in what we knew about our baby. It now had a semblance of a personality to us, and I think it was that which caused the sudden emotion. A baby girl. We could stop saying 'it' and start saying 'she'. Even now as I write this two days later, we can't stop grinning.

Just one more note about the skill of the people doing the scan. Dr Murphy walked in most of the way through the scan, and I reckon he must have been in the room for about 2 seconds, had a brief look at the screen, and says "Oh, a baby girl. Congratulations". How he could tell in that time is beyond me. It gives you a nice warm feeling knowing that this sort of expertise is looking after your wife and child.

We got a few pictures, both 2-D and 3-D, of the scan. There was only really one good 3-D shot, because our uncooperative daughter wouldn't turn and face the camera in any of the others. We have given her time-out for this, which she will serve immediately following her birth. If you don't do it, they'll never learn. The good 3-D pic is above. Don't concern yourselves with the umbilical cord being close to her neck, it's absolutely nothing to worry about and completely normal at this stage.

We got out to the car and couldn't stop hugging each other and smiling. It was quite something. We rang my parents and they were stoked, having two grandsons but no granddaughters until now.

Anyway, that was Monday. I'll keep you up to date.
cheers,
Macca