The call

My anxiety over these test results really began to soar Wednesday night. As much as I hated the waiting, I figured waiting was better than bad news. Our genetics counselor had told us to expect the results on Friday, but be prepared to possibly wait until Monday. The husband arranged to stay home on Friday so I wouldn't be alone with 4 kids and the news. So I set out to make Thursday as calm and relaxing as possible. There was a good chance it would be the last day to resemble any sort of normal for quite a while.

Thursday morning, I watched my younger 3 fly construction paper kites and build a "pool" out of garbage bags while J caught up with the sports channel. I sipped my coffee while surfing the internet and wishing my baby sister a happy birthday. When I got up for a refill around 9:30, I decided to grab my cell phone from the charger upstairs. And then I saw the Missed Call icon.

At 8:57, the office had tried to contact me. My voice mail was blinking.

I took the phone into the bathroom, afraid I was going to throw up. I wasn't prepared to get this call yet. The husband wouldn't be home until after the kids were in bed. I probably would have been better off waiting to listen, but I just couldn't.

"Hi. This is Kay, from 'ABC Baby Place'. I'm calling with good news...."

And then I just started bawling. "Good news." I hadn't really planned for those words. My 9 days of researching convinced me that my energy would be better spent putting that idea aside. My numbers were just too far off to cling very hard to that hope.

"You indicated on your paperwork that you'd like to know the sex. If you've changed your mind, hang up now!"

After finding out the sex of J, H, M, and C, I had been trying to convince the husband that this tie-breaker should be a surprise. He wasn't really going for it, and, faced with all of this pain, I had checked off the "yes" box. I guess that was my little bit of hope shining through. I might have hung up if my tiny BlackBerry keys hadn't been so blurry.

Our baby has 23 evenly matched sets of XY chromosomes. The boys win!

I called the husband and gave him the news while he was with a client. There was no way I'd be able to wait until he got home! I'm not sure how the client reacted to his choked up sniffles, lol.

We're having a baby boy. Our lives can get back to our version of normal. I can start shopping for a baby who will be coming home.

And I can actually look forward to the knock-down, drag-out fight that we call baby naming. :-)

9 weeks ago, my positive pregnancy test scared the hell out of me. It took me nearly 2 months to make the news public. I was afraid of other people's reactions, but I think I was also afraid to make it "real" to myself. And now I'm just so elated that I want the entire world to know how much I'm looking forward to meeting Number Five.

I'm so damn excited that I have enough left over for Number Six and Number Seven if need be! Well, not really. But close!

It's a beautiful Friday.