Photo by Christopher Beloch

Since my second pregnancy in 1999, family and friends have hoped for a girl. You see, we always preferred to keep our baby’s sex a surprise. The more I learned about birth, the more I resisted using technology simply because it was available. Since so little in life is truly a surprise, we appreciated the wonderment that comes with not knowing. I always felt connected just by feeling our baby growing and moving inside me; I didn’t need to know the gender.