Not Dwight What I Expected

We’re sitting on the 50-yard line of our first pregnancy with hopes of a barn-burner of a second half. And when I say barn-burner I don’t mean premature birth, lots of false labors, or giving birth in the back of the car. I mean finally knowing the gender of our baby so we can buy clothes, decorate the nursery, plan baby showers, and continue gaining weight the most delicious way possible.

Before I launch into the not-so-thrilling-but-exciting-nonetheless real story of our ultrasound this morning, I’d like to rewind to the tail of my dream from last night.

As we do every Tuesday night, Ben and I settled into bed to watch the rerun episodes of The Office on TBS. Two back-to-back episodes of this show are almost better than one episode of Survivor. So at about 11pm I dozed off with thoughts (ok worries) about the ultrasound and possibly finding out that our baby has some syndrome or not enough heart chambers or some other challenge that I don’t know if I am ready to face. I awoke at 2am, 3am, 4:45 am, and finally just laid awake from about 6:30 am until 7:30 am with excitement of seeing our baby for the first time and still those nagging little worries until I remembered my dream.

Somewhere between the 3am and 4:45 am awakening, I had a dream that we went to the ultrasound and the technician performing said service was Dwight K. Schrute, Assistant to the Regional Manager at Dunder Mifflin, Inc. in Scranton, PA. (If you don’t watch The Office, this means nothing to you.) Dwight was precise, somewhat rigid, and articulate as usual. He managed to inform us (without me crying or screaming) that we had a healthy dinosaur on the way. Additionally, he told us that its claws, large teeth, and all of its vertebrae were in tact and totally functional.

Ecstatic to potentially be giving birth to a prehistoric creature, I thought nothing of the fact that this Jurassic episode might bring back something now extinct. I would have been lauded as a marvel and possibly a hero, the science world over. The Discovery Channel could have dedicated a week of TV to me and called it “Dino Baby Week: A Bundle of Teeth and Joy.” But as any mother would be, I was just happy to have a healthy dinosaur.

Somewhat disturbed but amused and slightly diverted from my previous worries, I went to the real ultrasound today and saw an actual child moving within. Dwight wasn’t there and there were no large teeth but we got an alarmingly clear shot of the girl parts. Unfortunately, some of the first pictures we have of our child are inappropriate for public but we think she’s pretty cute. It’s a girl!