What's In A Name, Part I

I've slipped into a bad habit lately, and I'm getting called out on it. Over the past few weeks, I've slipped into referring to my child as "he." It's entirely subconscious, but could be interpreted to mean that I'm "rooting" for one gender over the other. I'm not. It's just very difficult to refer to my child with the gender-neutral "it." Makes me think I'll be raising the villain of a Stephen King novel. Plus, when you slip from pronoun to possessive pronoun, "it" turns into a grammatical nightmare.

We tried to come up with alternative gender-neutral names, like "Baby TBD," "Belly Fruit," and "Tubey" (as in Baby "to be" - credit, my brother and sister-in-law), but none of those names seemed to stick.

When we saw our latest ultrasound photos, we were inspired. Our baby clearly has a preference and, whether it pans out or not, he/she/it has a name that will last until birth and beyond: Lefty.