Our Gender Reveal

Sunday marked one year since Chris and I found out that we were expecting a little girl!

As soon as we found out we were pregnant we wanted to know the gender of our baby, probably because we are just as impatient as each other! I’m also a bit of an organised control freak and I wanted to know the gender so that the Nursery, Clothes etc would be perfectly ready and waiting for their arrival. 

We booked a Private Gender Scan at our local Clinic in Essex. The scan cost £69 and can be carried out from 16 Weeks Gestation. We managed to book an appointment for when I was 17+3 Weeks.

From the moment I conceived I was convinced that I was carrying a boy, as was everyone else. I was looking at “boy” Nursery décor, clothing, and picking out “boy” names. This was the case right up to the morning of our scan where I woke up, turned to Chris, and said “it’s a girl!” 

I was so nervous (it doesn’t help that my car had just failed it’s MOT an hour before hand and was going to cost £700 to fix!) I felt sick, I blocked everyone out, I couldn’t sit still, and I was scared. We had had so many scans previous to this one but for some reason I still feared the worst. 

We were called into the scanning room and I was asked to lay down. I’m not sure whether the sonographer could sense I was worried but the usual small talk of work and university commenced. “And there’s the heart beat.” Those four words were all I was interested in at our scans, after that nothing else mattered to me. Our baby was alive and healthy, everything else followed after.

Before they searched for baby’s gender, the Sonographer performed a Fetal Wellbeing Check. We were shown all the different body parts and functions of our baby which was really lovely. She also checked the position of baby, and I think that it was the one and only time that Florence was in the correct positon! I also think that it was the only time that Florence was in a suitable position to be scanned because the Sonographer was able to identify her Gender in seconds.

“It’s a girl!”

I cried, Chris cried. We were both so, so happy. 

After the scan had finished we were asked to wait back in the waiting room. We started discussing names and I showed Chris a note on my phone that said “Florence Estella” and he absolutely loved it. I was thrilled because it was a name that I wanted ever since I was a little girl. 

We were given three black and white scan photos that were presented in a little “Your Baby’s Photograph” book, and a full report of the scan which included the baby’s measurements, position, Amniotic fluid levels, the placenta position, and confirmation of the gender.

I came out of the scan feeling completely different about my pregnancy. I felt this newfound love and bond that I hadn’t felt before. I was yet to feel Florence move and sometimes I even questioned whether the pregnancy was real, or whether I was dreaming. It was real, there really is a little baby growing in my tummy, and it was a GIRL!

The day of the scan was also on my Father’s Birthday, and we were having a big Family BBQ that lunch time. It was the perfect time to announce the Gender but we hadn’t thought of any ideas to do so, but we knew we wanted to make it special. 

We drove to a nearby town and walked around the shops for some inspiration. We kept seeing these big Birthday boxes and thought that it might be nice to release balloons or something similar, but we couldn’t find any plain boxes. We then went to a Party Shop where they sold lots of Baby Shower pieces. I found these tiny plastic pink dummys and I thought that we could put them in a balloon, but Chris said they’d be too heavy. He then found these little pink pram sequins which were far better suited. The shop sold a pack of pink and blue balloons which question marks on them, we thought that these were perfect. Originally, we had asked the Shop Assistant whether she could put the sequins inside the pink and blue balloons, but she couldn’t with those types and suggested we use a heavier black balloon instead. Perfect! 

When we got back to my Parent’s house we set up the balloons and then asked both of our Mother’s to come over. We gave them a pin each and asked them the pop the Black balloon after a count of three. We explained that when the balloon is popped it’ll release sequins. If the sequins are blue we are having a boy, and if they are pink then we are having a girl.

Here is our gender reveal video, enjoy!