My husband and I had a decision to make regarding our pregnancy: to find out the gender of lil’ Bunny or wait and let it be a surprise. He was all for the surprise, but I was hesitant. Here’s the thing: life in the military is full of uncertainty and that year was no different. My husband was supposed to come home one month before the baby was born, and we were supposed to leave as early as 8 weeks after the baby was born. Not to mention, we didn’t live near BabiesR’ Us, Target, or a 24-hour Walmart. I couldn’t control any of those things, but I could control this (for the most part). I wanted to shop and look at things online with a gender in mind. He thankfully saw where I was coming from and agreed to find out the gender.

The next part, deciding how we’d find out, was a little trickier. Simply put, it sucks that he wasn’t there. My husband was so excited about the pregnancy, and because of that, I really wanted him to be part of that particular milestone.

I scoured blog after blog and read posts on different forums looking for ways other military couples did it, but I didn’t like any of them. I’d either have to find out before him or I’d have to wait an extra 2 weeks to find out (some suggested I mail an envelope with the results to him after so we could find out together that way). Neither of those sounded fun and I really wanted to make this moment special for both of us.

Not content with my findings, I put my thinking cap on and came up with an idea. Here’s how it happened:

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Three weeks before my anatomy scan, I went shopping at the BX/Commissary for pink and blue things. I wanted to mostly get food items so he could enjoy it or share it with others. (If you’re doing this and are in America I can almost guarantee that your box can be at least twice as big as mine since you’ll find more variety.) I also wanted him to have a few tangible things to keep and look at while he was away, so I got two onesies for each gender (luckily they had some specific outfits for dads!), and some teeny tiny shoes.

I kept the receipts for all the clothes, and whichever gender we weren’t having, I’d just return them when he came back.

As for decorating the boxes, I went all out! If all went according to plan, we’d find out the gender together when he opened the box, so I needed something that would catch my attention immediately over the video. Luckily, they make tons of funky and bright duct tape these days, so hot pink and a bright blue were exactly what I used.

I duct taped the inside of each flap and then used pink and blue tissue paper throughout the box. I also curled some pink and blue ribbon and threw those in there as well.

I used two medium-sized flat rate boxes (I needed two boxes of the same size so that they would be identical), and then I put them both into one larger box.

The next step was a last minute decision and I’m really glad I did it. I was afraid Mister Rabbit would open the large box and he’d maybe see pink or blue peeking out from the edges of the box. So, just for good measure, I took gender-neutral yellow tissue paper and covered each box. Then, I wrote which box was which on the tissue paper. (I also made a note of each box on my phone, because I knew I’d need to remember for my appointment. Box One = Girl and Box Two = Boy)

Then I shipped the giant box out to him. It arrived a few days before my appointment. Phew!

A friend came with me to the anatomy scan, which was nice since she helped calm me down (I was a little nervous), plus she turned out to be my Plan B. The original plan was to have the technician email my husband with the following information based on what he saw (I wrote this out for him so he wouldn’t be able to mess it up!):

Email address: bunny@email.com
Subject: Baby Bunny: Open this email when you’re talking to your wife
Message:
(please only write the box number—NOT boy or girl!)
If it’s a girl: BOX ONE
If it’s a boy: BOX TWO

Thank you so much!

During the appointment I told the technician that my husband was deployed and that we wanted to find out together. He knew what I meant and said he’d tell me when to look away from the screen, and then he’d print out the gender and give it to my friend.

(Side note: I was too flustered to actually ask him to do the email thing, so I asked my friend if she would do it and she happily obliged!)

He told me to look away when it was time for that part of the scan, but then he said the baby’s legs were closed. Noooo! All of the hard work was almost for nothing! I started poking and pushing on my tummy to make it move and told little Bunny to stop being a prude. It must have worked, because the tech said he saw what he needed to see and was 95% sure he was right.

After the appointment, my friend immediately emailed my husband using the paper I gave her, and I went to do other things to pass the time.

Killing some time until my husband woke up was the hardest part, but he finally called me in the afternoon, and that’s when the whole thing went down perfectly.

I know putting the packages together sounds complicated—at least I think it does when I explained it to people out loud—but it was actually pretty simple. It just took a lot of pieces all working together. I wanted to share this in case anyone else out there is going through or will go through something similar. Like I said above, it’s hard to not have your partner with you for the fun parts of the pregnancy, but this made it a teensy bit less difficult.