The second round of test results has come in. The good news is that the blood test definitely confirms that there are no chromosomal abnormalities. The excellent news is that while they were looking at the chromosomes anyway, they sequenced them to determine the gender, and we now know: Christina is carrying a baby girl. There’s no need to worry about how well the ultrasound tech interpreted the visuals; blood tests don’t leave any room for interpretation. It’s a girl!

Before the pregnancy, while we were just speaking about kids in purely theoretical terms, we decided that all things considered, we’d like our first kid to be a daughter. It’s easier to come up with really good names, for one, and I hear that little girls are less likely to be tiny hellions. Obviously there was no real way to actually choose the gender, but we still had our hopes.

When the pregnancy became real, suddenly there were long months when we knew that the kid had a gender, but it was unknowable to us. That was a bit irritating, but no matter; it was set, and in the meantime, we’d just proceed with planning for both possibilities. Just for fun, we tried analyzing the fertility chart to see where in the cycle the kid was conceived, because that apparently influences the gender, but the results were inconclusive. Just for fun, we read up on nub theory, and both of us analyzed the most recent ultrasound printout to see if we could figure out the gender from there. We came up with contradictory results that time, though I ended up being proved correct. Just for fun, of course, all of this.

But now we know. We can archive the shortlist of boys’ names, and focus on winnowing down the perfect first name. We can start determining which middle names are plausible, without worrying that we’re planning too much, too fast.

The pregnancy continues to be healthy and happy; most days these days there’s just not much to say or show about it. The kid grows a little every day, and that’s about it. Today, though, we have definite confirmation of exciting news:

It’s a girl.