When Nancy Ray from Raleigh, North Carolina, was ready to give birth to her third child, she was anticipating a daughter — her third. But nothing could have prepared her for the surprise of a lifetime when she went to hold her new child for the first time, looked down, and exclaimed "WHAT IS THAT?!?" Luckily for the new mom, birth photographer Lauren Jolly was there to capture the exact moment that Ray discovered she was now a "boy mom."
Nancy and her husband, Will, had had enough of surprises and decided that for their third baby they had to know the gender beforehand.
As the mom explained in a blog post, the couple had two girls already and her husband wanted to know what the gender of their third baby was going to be because "he wanted some time to process if we were having a third girl!"
So on July 19, 2018, the couple asked their ultrasound tech to write the gender of the baby in an envelope and then later opened it together to find that luck had found them again — they were going have another girl.
The mom was due on December 10, but her baby didn't arrive until the 13.
Which is when she contacted Lauren Jolly to photograph the special occasion. "Nancy was expecting her third baby girl last December and hired me to document her labor and birth," Jolly tells CafeMom. "After a long week of sickness, Nancy went into labor. I got the call and arrived at the birth center just in time to photograph baby's speedy arrival."
Ray and her mom arrived at the birth center at about 11:15 a.m., but it wasn't until about 1:15 p.m. that she decided it was time to get into her birthing tub.
Before the mom knew it, she was pushing her baby earthside and was in for the surprise of a lifetime when she took her first look.
In total, Nancy was only at the birth center in labor for two hours before her new baby was born. "She delivered her baby in the tub and then carried 'her' over to the bed," Jolly tells us. "About 10 minutes later, they prepared to cut baby's cord and Nancy exclaimed "What is THAT? Is this a boy baby?!"
Yup, it was true. The scan had gotten it wrong and the Rays were now the proud parents of a little dude.
"Will immediately double checked and fell to his knees," Jolly continues. "We were all in shock and couldn't stop laughing." The dad even quickly lifted his little guy's leg just to double check.
Some people have asked how this gender mix-up even happened, but the mom explained that the reason is not so crazy.
Although it seemed crazy that her scan would have missed that it was a he — not a she — Ray explained in her post that she's only had one ultrasound with each of her pregnancies at around 18 weeks.
"For this one, since I was giving birth in a birth center, I did have one more ultrasound to make sure the baby was head down," she wrote. "I was around 38 weeks in my midwife’s office, and they simply did the scan very low to confirm the baby was in the head down position."
Because they were only looking for the position of the baby, Ray didn't have "an opportunity for me to see or know anything different than the 'It’s a Girl!' sheet of paper that was given to us!"
The parents decided to name the baby Beaufort, a name they had picked out four years before when pregnant with their daughter Milly.
Jolly says that Ray is ecstatic to finally be a "boy mom."
Ray's daughter Milly had wanted a baby brother from the start, so she was thrilled to finally have a little brother. And the rest of the family followed suit.
"She LOVES being a boy mom!" Jolly says. "And Beaufort is the happiest little baby!"
Jolly's photo has seemed to strike a chord. On Ray's Instagram the picture has been liked over 6,600 times in three days.
"I'm so glad I was there to capture this moment — that's the magic of birth photography!" Jolly says.
