Not Gender Neutral

I was absolutely fine with keeping the gender a surprise. Really, I was. But then something happened to me around 22 weeks. I suddenly had a deep desire to know exactly what sort of babe was moving around in there. I felt detached and found it strange to say "the baby kicked me" and "do you want to feel the baby?" I needed a pronoun. More than that, I wanted a name. (We had a short list of lovely girl names to choose from, but absolutely no boy names. Which of course meant that we were definitely having a boy. In my head at least.)

One afternoon, while sifting through several storage containers of baby boy clothes, I started to fall in love with the little boy in my belly. The tiny clothes brought me back to those magical new baby moments with Wes and Chan. I draped a soft blue onesie over my belly and imagined this new growing boy. Perhaps he would be just like his oldest brother in demeanor, with Andrew's giant green eyes and born with a head of blonde hair and big feet? Or maybe he'd be darker, more Native American, like my dad's family?

Two hours later and I had placed all the clothes for our baby boy away in the dresser, waiting for his November arrival. I was convinced we were having a boy and proceeded to brainstorm boy names. Of course, we didn't actually know it was a boy; I was just a crazy pregnant lady reminiscing about my previous children. But to say something specific about the baby—his feet, his hands, his head—made me settled for a little while.

After nearly a week of boy-fantasizing (still unable to come up with a name), I surrendered and called the lab for the gender results from our 18 week ultrasound. Two minutes later I hung up feeling weak-willed and embarrassed after being told they didn't obtain or save the gender in their records... since we specified that we didn't want to know the sex. Silly me. Of course they wouldn't save that information; it's not vital for the doctor to know. And therefore it shouldn't be for us either. It's either a boy or a girl, not that complicated. I was disappointed with myself for caving in and gladly re-convinced myself that nature will give us the most wonderful surprise and I was so lucky.

I was feeling content once again with my gender neutral pregnancy. Until the OB informed me of the routine second ultrasound for women over 35. And that was it: the crazy pregnant lady with no willpower was back—and wanted to know for certain... to decorate, to shop, to nest.

Wesley came to the ultrasound with me, and we both confidently announced we thought it was a boy—before watching with awe at the 3D image of this beautiful baby... big cheeks, sweet nose, dainty hands. We were in love. To quote the lab technician, "It's not a boy!" And SHE most definitely is not.

Oh my gosh, it's a girl. A girl!!!

Vintage Camera Onesie :: Hen&Co