Finding out the Gender

Yesterday at the sonogram, the first thing the technician did was ask us if we wanted to know the baby's sex.  I asked if the only way to know it is a girl is the absence of a penis. She sort of laughed at my question and said that the presence of a vagina is the how you know it's a girl. I was embarrassed, as if I didn't know what the boy and girl body parts are!  But her revelation that a vagina is detectable in a sonogram is news to me.  I have heard various stories about the sonogram giving out the wrong gender. Even today someone told me that her friends were told they were having a boy. They viligantly decorated the nursery blue, only to have a girl. Forget the decor, but if you're set on a sex and it comes out the opposite of what you were told, or worse yet, hoped for, then there has got to be some psychological trauma involved.  You see, I am not convinced either that a sonogram can conclusively and infallibly determine the baby's gender. So, forget the whole finding-out-the-baby's-sex thing. And the only reason I would find out is to appease the strangers who ask me on a daily basis what I'm having. It's very sweet to be asked. Having babies brings out the best in people, strangers and friends alike.  I almost feel badly that I can't give the information that the passersby are looking for. I feel like I've let them down when I always and truthfully respond, "I don't know." Lately I have been adding "sorry" to the response.  People really do want to know what a pregnant woman has got inside there.  The other day a woman shouted from her window, "That's a good eight-pounder in there!" It almost sounded like I am carrying a fish!  After I respond my ignorance of what gender of baby I'm having, I often get a look back that states, "That's strange that you don't know the sex." Does everyone find out the sex these days and I am the only one on earth that doesn't? That's how I feel. And then I start to feel that I somehow don't belong, that I am way behind the times.  To be honest, I don't know why we don't find out the gender. I am not vehemently against finding out, nor am I unwaveringly committed to what seems like the old-fashioned way of being surprised.  It's a combination of the sonogram making a mistake, coupled with the guilt of deep down wanting one sex over the other. Because, believe me, at age 46, you just want a healthy baby.  The question I get from  my friends and acquaintances is, "What do you want to have?" And, of course, I always respond, "Healthy baby!".  And it's true. I can handle many, many things. But I cannot handle ever having a feeling of disappointment over the gender of a baby.  If I had said "yes" to the sonogram technician yesterday, there would have been some sort of unconscious reaction to the baby's sex, either from me, from my daughter, or from the daddy. And each of us would be lost in our thoughts, which would linger over the next 8 and a half weeks I have left.  No, thanks. I just want a healthy baby presented to me sometime in the first week of December. I just want to feel the flesh of my baby pressed against my cheek and chest.  The sex matters nothing to me.  So I don't want to know. And neither, apparently, does the daddy, because we both politely declined the technician's question to us.