It's a Boy! No wait... a GIRL!!!!

As a genetic counselor, I have come to believe that those 4D ultrasounds are dangerous. People who get them want to have pretty pictures of their baby and mostly don't realize that ultrasound technology is used for detecting birth defects. People who do them (especially for parents who just want pretty pictures) mostly are not medically trained or certified in any way that makes them qualified to be involved in the detection of birth defects. That said, we were ready to tell our friends about our pregnancy, we wanted to know the gender, and our next sono wasn't for 3 weeks, so I looked into them a little more.
It was cheaper to pay for one of the 4D sonograms than to go to our doctors office and pay for an extra one out of pocket (like $150 cheaper, probably because the 4D place doesn't have any medical expertise). Well, all we wanted to know was the gender, and I thought that was a pretty safe thing to ask for, so we went ahead and scheduled an appointment for a 4D sonogram. I wasn't going to use the sono for anything except the gender determination (no reassurance that there aren't any birth defects or anything like that), but I still felt conflicted about my decision.
We went with my mom and Jordan's mom, so they got to see the baby in real time with us. Our appointment was for 02/06/2010, the day I would be 17 weeks pregnant (the earliest they are willing to do gender determination).
I had already had some kind of intuition that the baby was a boy, and when the sonographer asked what I thought it was going to be, I didn't think twice about telling her. The sono got started and everyone was very emotional about seeing the baby. I was mostly amazed at the difference from the first sono to the second. They started going for the money shot almost immediately, but our little one was not being very cooperative. The legs were crossed and angled in a way that made it difficult to get the right view. Finally we thought we had the right shot and the sonographer thought "probably a boy". She wasn't sure about where the cord was though, so she looked around a little more to try to get a better view and find the umbilical cord. Finally, she decided she had a good enough view to declare that it as in fact a boy. She told us she was >90% sure.
We had never cared one way or another about the gender. We were a little nervous at first about a boy because both of us only ever had sisters, but I think we were over it by the time we left the office. I started looking for fabric samples for the nursery the next day. We told everyone our baby was a boy and we started to get really excited about our son.
Fast forward 3 weeks. We had our big diagnostic ultrasound on 03/04. I was 20 weeks and 5 days pregnant. While we were sitting in the waiting room, I jokingly said to Jordan, "what if they change the gender on us and tell us he's a girl!" Jordan just looked at me like that was the most appalling thing I could have said.
When we went in for the sonogram, the sonographer asked if we wanted to know the gender. We were mostly interested in using this sonogram to look for any birth defects, but we didn't want her to withhold any gender information from us. We told her we would like her to check, but that we had a sono three weeks before that showed it was a boy. The sonographer put the probe on my belly and the first thing that showed up on the screen was the money shot! She looked for maybe 2 minutes before declaring that in fact, our infant was a girl! In my shock, I said, "oh, you think it's a girl?!" to which the sonographer replied, "I don't think, I know!"
I'm not really sure what else happened during the sonogram. All of the organs and limbs looked fine, but I was pretty upset by the sudden gender change. It was like someone had stolen my baby boy out my belly and replaced him with some stranger. I think it took us about a week and a half to two weeks to really process and adjust to the change. I knew I had those negative feelings about 4D ultrasound for a reason. I guess I should have trusted my instincts, or at least reserved some amount of doubt about their ability to tell us the gender.
Our OB was nice enough to schedule us for another ultrasound on 03/22 that confirmed that indeed our baby is a girl! I have completely adjusted my thinking now, and I'm VERY excited about our baby girl. Let's just hope their aren't any more sudden changes when she is born!