Before I fell pregnant, I always assumed I’d find out what we were having. There was never really a question about it in my mind. I’m very much a “prepare for everything” kind of person. I like knowing what’s coming, I like having a plan, and I like feeling organised, so naturally, finding out whether we were having a boy or a girl just felt like another part of preparing for our baby.
Tenison, on the other hand, had always loved the idea of waiting. At first, I genuinely couldn’t understand why you wouldn’t want to know. We had the opportunity to find out this huge piece of information about the little person growing inside me, and he wanted us to just casually say, “No thanks, we’ll wait nine months.” For someone who likes to plan everything in advance, it definitely took me a little while to get my head around.
But when Tenison explained why he wanted to wait, I could understand where he was coming from. His first reason was pretty simple: whatever comes out on the day is what we’re getting. We can’t change it, nor would we ever want to, and whether our baby is a boy or a girl won’t change how much we love them. At the end of the day, all we really care about is having our little baby here, safe and healthy.
His second reason was the one that really got me though. He said that finding out whether your baby is a boy or a girl is probably one of the last really big surprises you get in life. As you get older — not that I’m old, of course! — there just seem to be fewer and fewer things that are a genuine surprise. We plan everything, we book things months ahead, we track parcels right to our front door and we can find the answer to almost anything within seconds. So when you think about it like that, there’s something really special about having this one huge thing that we simply don’t know.
At first, it was still hard for me to let go of the idea of finding out. I kept thinking about how much easier it would be to prepare if we knew, and there was obviously a massive part of me that was just curious. But over time, I’ve actually become really comfortable with not knowing. The further along we get, the more I love that there’s still this little piece of our baby that is a complete mystery to us, and now I genuinely wouldn’t want to find out before they arrive.
Surprisingly, preparing without knowing the gender hasn’t been difficult either. I’ve always loved whites, browns, greys and yellows for babies anyway, so even if we knew what we were having, our baby would probably still be wearing and surrounded by all the same colours. Doing everything gender neutral hasn’t felt like a compromise at all. If anything, I’ve really enjoyed choosing things simply because we love them rather than worrying about whether something is meant for a little boy or a little girl.
And of course, being the prepare for everything person that I am, there was absolutely no chance we were going into this without names. We’ve picked out the perfect boy name and the perfect girl name, and I absolutely love both of them. It’s such a strange thought knowing that one of those names already belongs to the little person growing inside me... we just don’t know which one yet.
I think that’s what I’ve come to love most about our decision. For now, we’re not preparing for our son or preparing for our daughter. We’re just preparing for our baby. And after nine months of wondering who this little person is, we’ll finally get to meet them and find out together.
I know waiting definitely isn’t for everyone — and if you’d asked me at the beginning of this pregnancy, I probably would have told you it wasn’t for me either. But somewhere along the way, Tenison managed to convince this control-loving, needs-to-know-everything woman that maybe not everything needs to be planned.
Some surprises really are worth waiting for. And whether we’re welcoming our little cowgirl, or our little footy player and Dad’s hunting and fishing buddy, we already know one thing for certain — we wouldn’t change it for the world. 🤍
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