I travel to California for work a lot. Not quite so often these days, but there was a period of about 2 years of my life where my client would joke that they just should just have bought me an apartment out there.
As I walked around with a coworker on my latest trip there, I remarked that both the hotel and the office I work at there were the backdrops to many fairly big work/life moments. I can remember standing by the window in the client's office as my awesome manager announced to me that he was leaving our firm after over a decade. I recall being told I had made consultant at our firm, and then promptly walking to the Nordstrom across the street to buy myself a congratulatory present (a big expensive ring I still wear daily). I remember standing by that same window a couple years later, feeling elated and a bit teary eyed while being told my bonus and raise information after a really successful year.
This trip was no different.
The one good thing about being sent for genetic counseling is that it also qualified me to have a special blood test, which tests for 3 various chromosomal abnormalities. It also is able to tell the sex of the baby. Right now our family has no idea that we even know; they all still think we are weeks away from finding out at the anatomy scan.
We had to wait a week for results, and I had to fill out a form that gave them permission to tell me the sex. I was very clear on the form - tell me, tell me now!! And yet, when I checked the voicemail left for me from the hospital....no sex.
Now, the good news is, the nurse left the really important information, which is that our baby is not at a higher risk for the 3 issues tested for.
That is awesome!
But...no sex?
I listened to the voicemail two more times.
No sex.
It was now 4:15pm EST. I frantically called the hospital, as well as my OB (who also gets a copy of the results), but to no avail. I was going to be in suspense for as long as it took someone to call me back. At close to closing time, I wasn't hopeful I was going to find out before the next day.
But then an hour later, while walking back to my hotel room with some lunch, my phone rang. I practically threw the food and everything I was carrying to the ground; I couldn't get to my cell phone fast enough.
Hello?!
Is this Karen?
YES!
Did you want to know the sex of your baby?
YES!!
"Congratulations...you are having a baby girl."
I responded with something which I'm sure didn't even sound like English, raced back to my hotel room, and called my husband. I just said over and over again, "It's a girl!"
The next day, after a long day of meetings with the client, as I was walking back to my hotel room, I passed by that same spot. I smiled to myself and thought, "And that's the walkway where I learned I was having a girl."
That California memory is my favorite.
