The old-fashioned way

A friend of mine wrote yesterday and said,

"Way to go on being surprised, since that is almost unheard of today and you are often looked upon as if you have three heads when people ask, 'Why? Don't you want to know so you can fix up the nursery?'"

Keeping the baby's sex a secret, even from ourselves, has been one of the coolest things about the pregnancy so far. When Hunter and Michelle had Maddie, Hunter said they always knew they would find out. This isn't a huge surprise to me because Hunter – and all the Georges – are major-league planners. Plan-dinner-while-eating-breakfast kind of people. I say this with love, because while I am organized, I'm not a planner. I often don't know what day of the week it is. I know the Georges probably plan on having an intervention for me at some point, and I'll try to fend them off with a DayRunner that I haven't used since college and a few adhesive-less Post-It notes.

Anyway, I said to Hunter one day early in the pregnancy that maybe we should make the sex a surprise. His reactions:

"People will give us white things. White clothes! For a baby! Can you imagine the stains?"
"We'll have to come up with two names, at least. Do you know how hard that will be?"
"White clothes! White blankets!"
"Let's not find out. That'll be really cool."

The prospect of stained everything almost made me change my mind, but then I did some breathing exercises, said some affirmations and got past it.

My desire to be surprised about the baby's sex was part of my philosophy of experiencing this pregnancy to the fullest. Since Hunter and I have a blended family, and we're not multi-millionaires, this may be the only baby I give birth to. So that's our plan – enjoy every minute and savor the unknown.