"Are you going to find out?"

The twenty week scan.

It was on Sam's 6th birthday so FIL was staying and we were able to leave the children with him. My first thought was that this was brilliant timing, my second that it would be very hard to give him a wonderful birthday if the scan brought bad news. Still that was the scheduled date.

We ummed and ah'ed for a while about whether or not to "find out the babies genders. We'd found out with the eldest but not the youngest so we'd done both and knew that neither was inherently better than the other.
Ultimately two things decided us, one was that an old friend of mine with twins - one of the few who had a singleton baby and then twins, said we should as it would help us get used to the whole "two-ness" and second the boys really wanted to know. They all had different opinions on what they answer ought to be, Sam wanted two sisters, Josiah two brothers, Ben was determined that they should both be boys but added "And we'll call the boy one Knighty and the girl one Princess" which was a little confusing, but them he wasn't quite 3!

For me it was a difficult decision. Obviously I have 3 boys and no girls, and I know that many people think Ben was a failed "try for a girl" - he wasn't, I was convinced throughout the pregnancy that the baby I was carrying was a boy and as soon as I held him I knew two things, that I was right and that he was just perfect.

But sometimes I do yearn for the things that having a girl might mean: Dolls and dolls' houses and frilly pink things; dance classes and girlish confidences.
Christmasses spent watching "The Nutcracker", "Ballet Shoes", "The Sound of Music" and "Gone With the Wind".

The chance to at some point be "Mummy's mum."

It's not that I don't want boys. If I had only girls I'd be longing for rugby matches and muddy knees and sons who'd someday tower over me.
It's that when you only have one kind, you don't have the other.

Anyway we decided we'd find out.

Once the scan was well underway and everything had been confirmed as fine so far - that same amazing scanner - we could even see earlobes and confirm that there were no cleft lips etc and once it had been confirmed that both babies were measuring bang on for dates as if they were singletons we asked the question.

The baby lying on the top is, we're told, almost certainly a boy. The one underneath gave us no doubts, hands behind his head, waving his genitals about.

So, five boys then...

We're going to need a lot of female pets, I am going to be totally outnumbered!