Finding out

This time next week we'll know.

Boy or Girl?

Entirely new wardrobe of stuff with cars and monkeys on it? Or a lifetime of handmedowns?

Because we've decided.  We're finding out.

We didn't with L.  We didn't want to spoil the surprise.  But the thing you realise when you actually have a baby is that the baby is the surprise; the crying, wailing, blood-and-gunk-covered, amazing bundle of pink and white and odd grey-blue that someone's just handed you.  She could have been boy, girl or anything in between and I'd still have been astonished by her.

We did find out with A and S.  We were being scanned every two weeks. Somehow when they're giving you fortnightly updates on their blood flow, projected weight and leg length, it feels stupid not to find out what there is (or isn't) between those legs.   We knew so much about them before they were born, but the meeting them was still nothing I could have imagined.

So this time, we've got form for either. But we're going to find out.  I think.

I want a boy.  Everyone else wants me to have a boy.  It's my turn for a boy.  I've got three girls already. A boy would be amazing.

Mums of boys tell me that no-one will ever love me like a son.  I'd love to know if that's true.  I'd like not to be scared by the thought of changing my friends' boys' nappies.  It's about time too that B had someone to keep him company, now and in 12 years time when this house becomes a monthly war zone of oestrogen;  that he, the eldest of three brothers, had someone to be a boy with himself.

A boy would be so exciting.  For me, for B, for our families who are inundated with girls.  Of course we want a boy.

But I want a girl too.  I know girls. I have girls.  The girls want a girl (well, L does; the little ones are more at the pointing at my tummy stage and saying "baby" because they know it makes me smile.)  A girl would be easy. The dynamic of four girls would (I hope) just work.

So I lurch - I imagine it's a boy and get all excited at the thought of telling people, of the different, of the new.  And then I imagine another girl, the familiar and safe, the four little girls playing together, and I want a girl.

I guess I must just want a baby.  Maybe we should leave it as a surprise... Because really I know: whoever (and whatever) he (or she) turns out to be, he's going to surprise us.

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Oh, and I hope everyone had a splendid Christmas!  We were mostly ill, but still managed to have fun, and even better Father Christmas (or Santa as they definitely call him this side of the Border) managed to find us in our new home.  

And here were are in 2011....Happy New Year!