Pregnancy & Gender

For the longest time, I was sure that I was having a girl. This child had visited both O'bee and myself in dreams. These dreams were the main reason we started seriously thinking about it and eventually tried. But the two ultrasounds that I have had revealed that we are actually having a boy. Given which Gods we called upon during conception and where we were geographically, this makes sense. But it still came as a shock.

My main sense of loss was raising a priestess to pass on women's mysteries to. When I told this is O'bee, he started getting really excited to have a boy, because his job in childrearing and magical training just became that more interesting, didn't it?

We had picked out a boy name and a girl name: Acacia Prudence for a girl (which was selected long before we ever tried to conceive, based on dreams) and Rowan Sebastian for a boy. Once we knew a boy was in our future, I started calling the baby by male pronouns. It helped me wrap my brain around that fact and shift out of the idea of raising a daughter.

Not that I place too much stock into gender and sexuality these days. After my own shifting identities (bisexual in high school, dyke in college, "experimenting" in all ways after that, married to man who then transitioned to being a woman after that, then being in a loving poly primary relationship with a gay man and conceiving a child with him) and the identities of everyone around me, it really should not matter. And so it does not.

We have started calling the baby by male pronouns and Rowan because it appears that is what is the most likely to happen. But as my ex-wife reminds me, we may have a little girl after all, regardless of genitalia. And I welcome that possibility, too. This child will be loved and cherished regardless of what my preconceived notions of hir gender were. And I think that makes me a better parent.