Goodbye Cosmo, Hello Alina May!

It's a GIRL!!!!

We had our monthly check-in yesterday, and our doctor told us there's a "200% chance" that we're having a girl! She was not modest at all...more than happy to flash her goods for the doctor to see. We are thrilled thrilled thrilled. Most people were so certain we were having a boy, this has been an exciting turn of events. TH's eyes are already all googly-eyed thinking about his little girl. I already know I'm going to have to be the strict parent...TH has a hard enough time telling me "no" about anything, there's no way he's going to be able to stand up to his darling little daughter. He was a bit deer-in-the-headlights when he realized "it's a girl!!" meant having to deal with tampons and make-up farther down the road, but he relaxed when I reminded him that that is MY job.

Truth be told, I'm a little more relaxed now that we know it's a girl. Girls I get. She's a little me! I know what girls are like. I know how to raise girls, how to deal with girls. A boy would have been a whole other universe.

With the revelation that Cosmo is a "she," Cosmo is not Cosmo anymore. TH and I agreed that Cosmo was a neutral name, and it just doesn't fit anymore. So we said goodbye to Cosmo, to our little mystery baby, and said hello to Alina May! It's been so fun having a gender-specific pronoun to use now, fun to say things like, "She was so squirmy at the ultrasound!" We can even stop calling the nursery "the nursery" and start calling it "Ali's room."

Knowing that's she's a "she" in there brings another layer of reality to this experience. Each step in the process has made this more real, more concrete, more meaningful. At first "baby" was just a dream. Then a reality, two lines on a test. Then we saw a fluttering heartbeat on a little bean. Then we saw a squirmy little baby, that actually looked like a baby! And now that baby is a baby girl. A daughter. Alina.

TH actually came up with this name. It's a mixture of his name and the Russian version of my name, and Ali, which is what we'll call her, is a mixture of his name and my name. And May is honoring my maternal grandmother, the most amazing woman I've ever known. She is feisty and energetic and funny and driven and loving...she is everything I want my daughter to be. We love the name for all these reasons, and because we feel we've found a name with a little Russian flair to honor Ali's dad's background and a little Southern charm to honor her mom's background as well.

Alina May. Our daughter.

I am filled with bliss.