Nathan squeezedLisa’s hand.
The sonographer smiled. ‘Your midwife will continue to check that everything is progressing as it should, and you’ll feel him—’
‘Him?’ Lisa and Nathan spoke in unison.
The sonographer hesitated. ‘Or her. Would you like to know the sex of your baby? This will effectively be your twenty-week scan. Unless we have reason to see you again.’
Lisa and Nathan looked at eachother.
Nathan spoke first. ‘Do you want to know?’
Lisa hadn’t allowed herself to think so far ahead. With Pip she had always felt her baby was a girl, but she never got the chance to find out officially.
‘Only, if you don’t mind, I’d like to wait … for the big day.’ Nathan rubbed his thumb across the back of Lisa’s hand.
Her heart swelling a little at the look of love and excitementin Nathan’s eyes, Lisa nodded. ‘Yes, let’s wait. We’ve already had one surprise today.’
By the time the scan was over, Lisa didn’t know if it was because her hands were shaking with the shock of being eighteen weeks pregnant or if it was because the wad of blue tissue she had been passed wasn’t absorbent that she was making a terrible job of wiping the gel off her stomach. In the end she putthe tissue in the bin and decided to just pull her leggings up. Her head was too full as she tried to process the last forty-five minutes to worry about the cold squelchy gel on her stomach dampening her clothes.
After they said thank you and left the room, Lisa and Nathan walked hand in hand along the corridors of the hospital, neither of them speaking. Once outside, Nathan took in a bigbreath and looked at Lisa.
‘Eighteen weeks, can you believe that?’
Lisa put her hand to her stomach. ‘No, it’s the best news.’ She smiled, a full beaming smile.
‘And that means we’re having a baby in—’
‘Twenty-two weeks,’ Lisa finished.
They looked at each other, eyes wide.
‘Bloody hell! We have seriously got some planning to do.’ Lisa giggled, releasing her earlier tensionas happy tears escaped her.
