Women's Care of Wisconsin: Chelsea's Gender Reveal Story

It started with a Facebook comment, submitted last month for our Packer contest:

Shout out to our sonographer (I believe initials are KF on our ultrasound pics) who unknowingly had us convinced our baby was a girl and gave us the surprise of a lifetime when we opened her envelope and unfolded the sticky note that was folded a million times and read "Boy!" Thanks for being part of our super fun and emotional gender reveal!

And a picture:

Then we just wanted more details.

And a generous mom gave us just that.

This is Chelsea’s Story:

Let me set the stage for Zayn’s gender reveal by starting with our first, Kenzie, who will be five in April. We were going to find out the gender at a little party, not at the anatomy scan. Therefore, the sonographer had me and my husband close our eyes when she was checking the genital area. Later, she asked us to close our eyes a second time, and she checked again. So when we found out that we were having a girl at our gender reveal, the double check experience was in our minds.

Fast forward to the anatomy scan for our second, and again we didn’t want to know the gender at this time. The same sonographer did the double check thing again, exactly like when we had our daughter. A tip off.

They wrote it on a sticky note and folded it up, but we knew. It was going to be a girl.

Soon after, a friend convinced us our suspicions were correct.

‘I’ve got three boys,’ she said, ‘and I never had to have a double check for any of them. You’re having a girl.’

And now a little backstory. We struggled with infertility, or, as Dr. Reed calls it, subfertility. So there was a lot of extra stress and effort and emotions that went into creating our family. While we were going to be happy with either a girl or a boy, we were kind of hoping for a boy, because if we had two girls, we were probably going to try for a boy. It was just going to take some of the pressure off of us with our third child.

Anyway, the gender reveal party was only a few days removed from this whole discussion, a party we wanted to be as unique as our daughter’s was (fireworks on NYE!), something that went beyond a blue or pink cake.

My Packer-loving husband liked the idea of having a Packer theme. Why not have it on a game day? And since the draft was coming to Green Bay the following spring, why not do the reveal like a draft pick?

So we filled up a private room at a local establishment with family and friends, and when the time was just right, and we were on the clock, we silenced the crowd with the sound of the ESPN NFL Draft chime. Just to make it official.

‘With the first pick in the 2025 draft,’ my husband said, ‘the Cook family selects . . .’

We opened the envelope and immediately burst into tears.

‘BOY!’ we read.

We could not believe it. We were hysterically happy.

And that struggle with creating our family I mentioned before, well, that all came flooding back. How in 2019 we found out it wasn’t working to create a family on our own. Started with fertility meds, got pregnant, and miscarried right as Covid was starting to shut the world down. Then six months later we got pregnant with our daughter. And because that worked for us, we figured it would work again. For a year or more we were back on the same meds and it wasn’t happening.

So we did more.

IUI was the next step. We took it as a sign when my husband’s company changed health insurance to include fertility coverage. This was going to be our year! Starting in January of 2024, we did four rounds of IUI and they all failed. IVF was going to be next. And we were all in for that.

After the fourth failed IUI, we didn’t do medications for the next month. You wait for your period to start again, and then the first step is birth control. So we’re doing all this IVF stuff, labs and prep work, just waiting for my period, and guess what? It doesn’t come. I take a pregnancy test. And I’m pregnant. Just as I was about to start an IVF cycle. That definitely added to the emotions of gratitude and gratefulness.

We’re Christian and give all the glory to God. We believe that he creates these little miracles, and he had this story written for us. He wanted to challenge us.

And He sure did.

Mom’s Note #1: Back to the Packers. While we had already picked the name Zayn, my husband’s head was stuck on Jayden. Yes, the very name of one of his favorites on the Packers, Jayden Reed. I wasn’t so sure. When our son was born we just couldn't decide right away, so he went three hours without a name.

My husband left it up to me. Jayden’s a good name, but it just wasn't our boy.

Mom’s Note #2: KF is Kathy Feldkamp, our ultrasound sonographer. Thank you so much, Kathy, for being part of our special gender reveal!