Decisions

Our second trimester ultrasound is just weeks away and Josh and I were trying to decide whether we wanted to find out the sex of the baby or not. I found out ahead of time with both Ellis and Charlie and liked knowing, but since this is the last time I'm doing this, I thought it might be fun to have a delivery-room surprise to see what that's like. It's outside my comfort level as a super-planner and I like that.

My only worry was that while we had identified a fantastic girl name that we love, we were really stumped trying to come up with a similar caliber boy name. I can tell you the well runs a little dry on male names when you've already named three boys. What if our fourth son arrived in the delivery room and we were forced to settle on some mediocre name? "Sorry, kid, we just ran out of steam."

Josh and I decided that if we couldn't come up with a boy name that we loved as well as the girl name we've chosen before our ultrasound at the beginning of December, we would find out the baby's sex. That way, if the babe's a girl, we could relax, and if he's a boy, we'd have five months to buckle down and choose a great name for him.

I'm pleased to say, the pressure worked. This week, we found our baby boy name (and no, I'm not sharing either of our choices). The problem is solved and I will get to have the additional delight of discovering whether our last child is a son or daughter when he or she first arrives in the world. Of course, now I have the problem that I love both names so much, that I'm a little sad that we'll only be able to use one of them. I keep crossing my fingers for there being boy and girl twins growing in there. Josh keeps teasing me that we can just use the other name for our next baby when I forget how sick I was during pregnancy and my legendary baby lust has me begging for "just one more." Not going to happen, though, I swear. This is the last time.