Even though the big secret was revealed to the whole world, there was still another secret that far fewer people were privy to:
Boy or Girl?
Boy or Girl?
Only a select few people knew. Not even Hillary and I; we arranged with Hillary's doctor to seal the identity of the gender in an envelope, which we delivered to Hillary's mother, Teresa, and Hillary's brother's girlfriend, Mohini. The two of them had volunteered to throw us a gender reveal party as soon as they heard we had a baby on the way.
It was almost a month between the big Facebook pregnancy reveal and the gender reveal party. And in that time, Hillary researched (and practiced) every old wives' tale she could find about determining the baby's gender.
What she considered the most important tell was the baby's heartbeat. Using a home fetal doppler, she found (and still finds) the baby's heartbeat at least once a day. According to the doppler, the baby has a heart rate of around 150 bpm. And, according to whatever nebulous place on the internet where one finds such information, a heart rate that slow indicated a boy.
Hillary was also incredibly nauseous for the entire first trimester. And, according to a friend of ours who experienced the same symptoms, those are symptoms of being pregnant with a boy (the friend in question had, appropriate to her theory, given birth to a boy).
When the gender reveal party finally arrived, Hillary and I were treated to an amazing surprise: a volcano.
We were to pour baking soda into the volcano, and watch as lava streamed out the top. The color of the lava would indicate the baby's gender.
Volcanos are messy, so we took it outside. And there, in our front yard, we saw it.
PINK lava.
Honesty time. And yes, I realize that's pretty much all the time with me, especially when I post my thoughts and exercises and whatever else on the internet for all to read. But time to lay out the truth like a fitted sheet. Because that's the thing with the truth: it looks easy, but most of the time it's corners have elastic in them and you can't get them around the mattress without someone's help.
I was a little disappointed.
Don't get me wrong; I am absolutely thrilled that me and Hillary are going to bring this little girl into the world. I consider myself the luckiest man in the world (eat your heart out, Lou Gehrig), that I not only get to raise this child of mine, but the two beautiful, wonderful girls that God decided to bring into my life. And I could not ask for a more supportive, hard-working, and loving woman to call my wife through it all.
But, even so... I sort of wanted a son. And I don't think there's anything wrong with that.
Maybe it's something hard-wired into the DNA of a man, to want a smaller version of you running around behind you, learning all the things you learned, from you, watching him grow and wondering what kind of man he's going to be. And, of course, there's the patriarchal desire to continue passing your name to your descendants. As if I was a Game of Thrones character looking to extend my family bloodline.
By that evening, when all our friends had gone home and Hillary and I had put our two current girls to bed, the shock of seeing the pink lava had worn off. And I'd had time to consider what I'd been telling people for weeks, who'd been asking the ubiquitous question, "What do you want your baby to be?"
"Healthy," I'd said.
And, by God, I am sticking by it.
This child is the child that Hillary and I prayed for, the one we'd spend month after month trying for, mourning for, and placing all our hopes and dreams in. After losing the pregnancy in October (see last blog post), all we wanted was a happy, healthy baby together. The way I look at it, God has a lot more experience in choosing the perfect children for their parents, and I haven't heard an instance yet of Him getting it wrong. She is our child, our gift from God, exactly as He has intended her. The gender He's picked is good enough for Him, so it's certainly good enough for me.
Last weekend, Hillary and I got to attended two weddings on the same day; one in the early afternoon, and one in the evening, one-hundred-and-fifty miles apart. It made for a lot of driving, but we got to see our beautiful girls drop flower petals just before a bride made the walk to meet her groom.
No, really, I'm not crying. There's just something in my eye.
And then, as I gradually stretched the truth of the matter around my mattress of life, I began to realize the full weight of what it meant to have the unparalleled honor of being a father to three daughters.
One day, I will be the guy walking a girl down the aisle to meet her groom.
And I'm going to get to do it three times.
There are going to be, at fewest, six prom dresses these girls are going to be fitted for, which I'm going to object to because of the (in my eyes) scandalous amount of skin they show, but for which I'll eventually give in at the girls' insistence, because I'm their dad and I'm already wrapped around their little fingers.
Boys galore are going to be brought to our house, and I'm going to feel like almost all of them are not good enough for my girls. I'm going to ruthlessly create lists of all the qualities I don't like in them, but I'm going to keep (most of them) to myself because I want to trust their judgment. And besides, everyone knows telling a teenage girl she CAN'T date a certain boy only makes her want to date him even more.
I'm also going to learn how to disassemble a gun on the kitchen table, clean it, and meticulously reassemble it. Just in case.
There are going to be sleep-overs, make-overs, tea parties, wrestling matches, games of tag and hide-and-seek and video game marathons, sword fights and scary stories and campfires and s'mores. And it's all because God decided to bless me with three little girls.
Yes, I'm hopelessly outnumbered. But this is exactly how God intended it. So I wouldn't have it any other way.
Seeing how grown-up Faith and Zoe already are, and how fast they're growing up, I barely held it together as the wedding progressed. And as much as I can't wait for our new baby to arrive, I want to revel in this magical time of not knowing, of simply wondering and waiting and hoping.
Oh, and if you're wondering, the baby is completely healthy.
See you in October, Elliot Katherine Smith.
