when you know

There are a lot of women who can tell you that they knew the gender of their baby in advance, knew it so deep down that there was no question, and when they're looking back on that pregnancy the truth becomes something even more concrete, something even truer, like a fact that was made before the baby was even a sliver of thought.

When I think back on my pregnancy with Alice, I feel a little like those women--- making myself into a fortune teller more sure, someone who knew she was destined to have that spark of a girl in her life.  Meant to be.

But really, I'm not quite so sure.  Now that I've lived and breathed her air for nearly four years, her existence is so concrete, so viable---- the line between what I knew then before Alice's slender white form moved on the ultrasound screen, and what I know now with her here, the who and what and why of her--- everything I thought about her before she came laughing into this world is fuzzy and unfamiliar.

So much has been different with this pregnancy.  And the sense of what's to come, the feeling about the baby we were going to inherit, it is even stronger.  So strong, in fact, that I've known the gender of this baby long before it came to be---- long before any humming thumps on a heartbeat doppler, and long before a small white form moved across an ultrasound screen.  In fact, last November my mom and I were shopping at the thrift store and I fell in love with a tiny one-piece romper that I promptly bought.  It was a purchase of faith, really.  Knowing that something would be coming our way in some murky blue future - a future I wanted to come to pass even as I feared what it might mean.

And even as I still worry and wonder, as I've worried and wondered since the mysterious two pink lines appeared on a test I was surely taking only as a joke--- things are coming more into focus, and the faith that surged and fired in my heart when I bought that romper is helping me to quiet my worries.

So even though I feel totally unprepared,

I think it's going to fit him just fine.