Gender and names

As you might have noticed, we are not finding out the sex of our baby until he/she's born.


This is very unlike me, the ultimate control freak. But when my DH said that if I was dying to know, he'd be OK with it, but he'd prefer to wait, it all of a sudden sounded like a good idea to me. Publicly, I say it's because after all our high tech attempts to become pregnant, it ended up happening the old fashioned way, so we're sticking with old fashioned. Privately, though, I think it has a little something to do with the nursery, believe it or not.


I'm not a big fan of the pink/blue themes, or even the really "baby-looking" pastel themes in general. My decorating style tends to be more contemporary, with simple lines, dark woods, a little minimalistic. I like neutral colors, symmetry and balance. And the idea of having a pastel, cutesy nursery just doesn't appeal to me. Since we're not finding out the sex, I feel a little more justified in going with browns, tans, taupes and creams in the nursery. The walls are (will be!) 2 shades of light taupe with a chair rail, the furniture is espresso wood, with beige microfiber for the glider, and the bedding is 2-tone brown stripes and dots. Hardly sounds like a baby's room, right? Well, I'm at least doing an animal theme, so I have a bunch of pictures and wall hangings picked out to spruce it up a little.


But I want the nursery to be muted and quiet, not bright and stimulating. I want it to be a place for sleeping, not for playing. We're lucky enough to have a formal living room connected to the family room that will become the playroom (it's now our gym, but once DH finishes half of the basement, all our equipment is moving down there). The playroom will have bright colors, motivational posters, chalk boards, those rubber floor puzzle tiles, and all kinds of fun, stimulating stuff in it. Toys will go in the playroom, where bedtime books will go in the nursery.


So in a weird way, not knowing helps me feel good about a more "adult" neutral nursery style!


Plus, we're having fun picking out names for both sexes! We actually had both the boy and girl first names picked out before we even got pregnant. We both agreed completely on the boy name, and were tossing around a few girl names we both liked, and then a few months ago my DH came up with a really unique, awesome girl name that I just love. So we've been playing around with middle names, and I think we're all set (I even setup birth announcement templates in Shutterfly to see how it looks on paper!). There have been two deaths in our families, and we are able to honor both with the first and middle names we've chosen, which we both feel really good about.


Most everyone I know who has been pregnant recently has found out what they are having, and it's fun to be in the dark!