Indeed, I commented something similar. Ah well, at least he or she will have the love of his/her parents as a gift.

I'm sure the baby will be happy to constantly remind his/her parents of their love for their parents throughout their teen years.

I know we'll do our best to keep the two completely separate, but sadly we can't control other's. So we'll see

Anyway, yesterday was the 6 month mark! He's due December 27th, and so far, to us, time has flown! As for the world he'll be joined with in December, we currently have two puppies that I'm sure will enjoy the company of a new member of the family

Do you have newer ultrasounds or fun stuff like that to see how the baby is growing?

Yeah, pics or it didn't happen

You guys just assume everyone celebrates Christmas?

Lucas: haha re: teenage angst
Merth: No, but Swivel has made his religion clear in other topics, hence we know he celebrates Christmas.

That's pretty presumptive.

Currently, there are these.

IIRC, Swivel is Greek Orthodox, so no, not presumptive.

Indeed. We need moar pictures! And do you know the gender of the baby? I vaguely recall you saying you didn't want to know, I think...?

In his last post, Swivel called the baby a he.

It isn't unusual to choose masculine pronouns as a generic gender to avoid calling a person an "it" so I wouldn't take that too seriously given that Swivel has previously said they didn't want to know -- unless of course he comes out and tells us they changed their minds and found out.

To save the effort of reading through the old posts for a post that may or may not be there, (images are much easier ) I think they didn't want to do blood testing (or along those lines) as it can cause birth complications or something. But if they get regular ultrasounds (as they already have at least one), the sex can be determined that way - as I'm sure you're aware.

The sex can be determined early on given the results of certain controversial, and otherwise inconsistent and unnecessary (?), tests. These tests involve extracting amniotic from the womb, as well as blood from the baby. These tests can themselves result in birth defects (that of which the test is for) and/or miscarriages. Only ~5-10% of babies that are administered these tests come back positive, and a similarly low percentage of THOSE babies are actual positives (as opposed to false positives).

The scariest part of all this is that 90-95% of babies that come back positive ("falsely" or not) are terminated.

• It's not worth the risk
  
• It's not worth the emotional trauma inflicted if the test results in a false positive
  
• We're not going to terminate the baby even if it does have down syndrome or some sort of defect, so there's no real point to it.
  
  I can understand preparing for something like that, but it brings me back to the first bullet.

So, since the test results are simply informative, and nothing positive can result from them, I think I can wait to find out if my child is retarded.


Now that we're at the six-month mark, we were just able to find out that its a boy! We didn't get new pictures printed, but they did take some. I have a CD of pictures (and maybe a video, too!) I'll see if I can get more pictures from it and post them up

I don't feel like sifting through the other posts to see if I had mentioned this before, but we've got two boy names picked out right now:

• Gabriel Alexander Dalrymple
  
• Christopher Daniel Dalrymple

Hey all!

He was born on January 3rd!

Someone bug me and I'll start a new topic with pics and info

Congratulations! What did you decide to name him? And, of course, get that new topic posted!

Ugh. Why are you encouraging him. Seriously.

That is great! Did you make a little cemetech shirt for him yet?

He's named Gabriel.