We had our gross morphology scan. Already! I know. There were no nasty surprises - everything looks fine. And I can announce that the baby is... either a boy or a girl. They certainly seemed to think it was one or the other.

I don't know how many of you recall the day we found out the sex of the Prata Baby, but to quickly recap, we were caught completely off-guard by the question at our sixteen week appointment, before we'd had a chance to discuss the matter at all, and after twenty seconds of umming and ahhing, Mr Bea gave a sort of shrug which I interpreted as not having any real opinion on the matter, so I confidently turned to SOB and told him to spill.

Apparently, however - and this would have been explained on my blog at the time if I wasn't so busy having an unnecessary freak-out about the Prata Baby's measurements - that non-committal shrug should have been interpreted as a mere continuation of the series of displacement actions already underway, and if I'd waited for the series to come to a close, Mr Bea would have expressed a preference for not finding out the sex of the baby.

This time, he expressed his preference early. He does not really want to find out ahead of the birth. And given that I had my way last time, I have ended up letting him have his way this time. So we don't know.

I have mixed feelings about this, the most prevalent of which is ambivalence. All the important bits - the bits that contribute to ongoing life and health - appear to be present, in the right places and proportions. What else is there to care about?

On the other hand, I do admit that it took a while to re-orientate myself after finding out that PB was a boy. I had it in my mind (I realised afterwards) that we were having a girl. Probably this impression was born of a) a dream I had and b) the slightly noddy "logic" that if Jester was a boy, then the next one was sure to be a girl, 'cos, boy, girl, boy, girl... you know. Although maybe Twin A was a girl, I'm not sure. In any case, it's not that I was disappointed to find out PB was a boy, it's just that it kind of felt, all of a sudden, as if there was a stranger in there, instead of the baby I'd been expecting. It took a few weeks to "get to know" him all over again. I was glad that happened during the pregnancy, rather than after the birth, and I'm feeling ever so slightly nervous about having to do it after the birth this time.

On the other hand, it seems very fitting to leave it shrouded in mystery. This baby has already given us the shock of our lives just by being there in the first place, and we really have no idea how it happened. It's our surprise baby, in more ways than one, and as long as they're all good surprises, I can be happy to roll with each and every one.