The element of surprise

'Oh, good for you!'

'I'm so glad you're doing that!'

'How nice! That is such a good way of doing it!'

I get these comments a lot these days, it seems. Am I being complimented for some great accomplishment or tough moral stance? No, simply for not knowing whether our second child is a boy or a girl.

(Usually the way we explain it is to answer the question 'When are you going to find out?' or 'So are you finding out what it is?' by replying, 'Yes, in February,' and then watching them do a double take as they realise that was when we said the due date was.)

The almost-universal approbation with which our decision not to find out in advance is greeted puzzles me, as if there's some sort of moral high ground related to staying in the dark. As far as I'm concerned, it's not a matter of right or wrong, but simply a matter of personal preference; and as it happens, this is what works for us.

I definitely wanted the surprise the first time around, mainly from a keen sense of anticipation and an awareness that this was the most open-ended question there could possibly be. I think I was more likely to want to find out this time around, but Michael leaned very slightly toward the surprise model, and I didn't feel strongly enough to override that. Besides - the deciding factor - the practice I'm with now does not routinely order the 20-week ultrasound, meaning that it's purely elective, meaning that insurance wouldn't have covered it, meaning that we would have had to have been really dying of curiosity to find out.

Whether it's a boy or a girl, our plans are not going to change. Baby is going into the nursery and we're not going to bother repainting. And most importantly of all, it truly doesn't matter to us which one we have. We don't look upon our family as a work in progress, lacking only one piece to complete the collection. Children aren't models from cereal boxes, where you need to collect all the action figures to get the full benefit of the set. We are simply not 'hoping' for one above the other.

Back to the moral high ground question. It seems that a lot of people tend to think it's good to be surprised because 1) that's uncommon these days, and anyone who bucks the trend is to be commended; 2) that's the way it used to be, hence old-fashioned, hence more natural. Both of these ideas are rather silly. It's uncommon in our culture and old-fashioned not to shower every day, but does that mean that's necessarily a good thing?

Okay, I know there are some possible risks to fetal ultrasounds and there haven't been enough conclusive studies done to conclude long-term effects, so there's the slight possibility that we should all avoid ultrasound until we know for sure just what the side effects really are. I'm still inclined to think that they're relatively harmless (of course, that's what they thought about x-rays too, back in the days when they were so casual about this new science that they'd let kids x-ray their feet just to try on shoes) and I'm not going to be that worried to the point of avoiding them for that reason alone. After all, sound waves bounce around in this world all the time, right?

Why am I up so early on a Saturday morning? Baby literally prodded me awake. Whoever you are, child, you will have no problems keeping up with your older sister - and believe me, I thought she was a live wire.