this is something I have agonized over.

If you know me well, it will probably come as no surprise to you that I would agonize over something very trivial. I'm very good at it. But anyway, over the last few months, I've been completely on the fence about finding out the gender of this baby before he or she is born. When I was pregnant with Ambrose, I was totally opposed to finding out. I loved, craved, and savored the surprise, and if I had to do it over, I wouldn't do it any other way. His birth was beautiful, and I will never forget the moment that I learned that he was, in fact, a HE. There are so few good surprises in life, that being one of them. Generally speaking, I think it's genuinely better to wait until the baby is born to find out. I think learning an unborn baby's sex is oftentimes just another way that modern medicine strips pregnancy and birth of their natural mystery and beauty--it's another of the many modern interventions that make women feel as though they don't know "how" to be pregnant or give birth without ultrasounds or pitocin or epidurals or narcotics or a measuring tape. It's a bunch of bologna, and I try to steer clear of that mindset as much as I can. That said, I also think it can be really boring. Sometimes we get birth announcements in the mail and I find myself thinking, "Okay, we already knew it was a boy, we already knew his name, and we already knew the date of your planned induction. So, uh, thanks for letting us know that your baby weighed 7lbs, 10oz!" I'm not saying it's a nice thing to think, or that it makes the baby itself any less amazing, I'm just saying that I think it's awfully dull. And very trendy. But there are other factors involved. Between the bizarre illnesses and ailments and infections this pregnancy has provided, the recent change in jobs, insurance, and care providers, and now the prospect of moving and trying to sell our house in a not-so-hot market, not knowing anything about this baby started to feel like just one more thing that I couldn't prepare for--it felt daunting, not exciting-- and I didn't want to spend the next few months feeling that way. I eventually decided that it was more important to me to be excited about the pregnancy and birth of this new person than to hold to some theoretical ideal. With Ambrose, it was more important to me to have one, huge explosive moment of surprise at the birth. This time, I'm going to need a slow, steady drip of happiness, and I'm OK with that. In fact, I couldn't be happier. I think with another baby, I'd love to go the surprise route again. I really loved it. But today, I had an ultrasound, and I found out. I'm thrilled to death! And on the way home, I bought this. :-) :