When I was pregnant the first time, I decided not to learn the baby's sex until it was born. A friend told me that it provided a little bit more impetus to get through labor and delivery, to see what you were finally having, although I didn't find that true at all. I was too busy being terrified and in agony (even with an epidural) to care whether I was giving birth to a boy, a girl, or a squid. I had suspected I was having a boy based on some old wives' tales, the fact that I was convinced that blob in the ultrasound somehow looked like a boy, and because some random lady in a pink tracksuit on the street told me I was. We had told our doctor what our name choices were for a boy and a girl, and when I finally pushed all five and a half pounds of my child out, the doctor announced, "It's Paul!" Who? I thought.

I didn't have any big deep "I have a son" moment and didn't for awhile because I had just given birth and had a newborn, both of which had temporarily given me severe brain damage. The only thing that differentiated this newborn from any other they would have handed me was that he peed on my face more than I think a girl probably would have. I didn't so much have a boy as I just had a newborn.

With our second (and final) child, we decided to find out ahead of time, just to have one of each experience. This time, I suspected I was having a girl. If I wasn't sick-sick (three bad colds in the last two months), I was gagging on everything from my toothbrush to the smell of coffee to the mere idea of a pulled pork sandwich (ugh....all that...meat.) Plus, the peanut gallery agreed: a weird lady in my doctor's office, my friends were confident I'd have a daughter, and I started to believe them. One of each. I couldn't wait to go and purge the most egregious of the boy clothes from our supply (for some reason we have a lot of clothes that say things like "Daddy's Big Guy.") I was excited to play "Girls Just Wanna Have Fun" for my daughter (the song, not the movie.)

This past Friday, I got my ultrasound and the tech placed the results in a sealed envelope. My husband and I made plans to go to dinner and learn what we were having. I made reservations at a restaurant downtown which we canceled when Steve said he didn't want to go back downtown after work. That night, I nearly divorced the father of my current and unborn child when we learned that every single restaurant in Evanston on a Friday night has a 45 minute wait time. After getting denied at four different places--not good for an impatient, pregnant woman--we drove back to Chicago after all to an Italian restaurant. We each got a cocktail and then I opened the envelope. Inside was an ultrasound with a sticky note that said "Congrats" on it. I lifted it and there was a picture of a tiny penis. IT'S A BABY BOY ! ! ! it said in robotic letters. "Wow!" Steve said. "Our house is going to be a mess!" I had earlier proclaimed that I wanted to have two boys, before all signs started pointing to girl--less pressure, more hand-me-downs--but despite that earlier declaration, all I felt was a sense of sadness.

I don't even know what was making me sad. I'm certainly not one of those women who needs a little daughter to dress up and be her mini-me, and have always been a little scared of those who do. With a blanket acknowledgement that not all girls are into the same stuff, I hate those particular shades of purple and pink that seem to be unavoidable with girl toys, clothes and accessories these days. I've been more than happy to skip the whole Frozen thing. And, I can bypass the scary job of raising a woman in today's terrifying world. I think I'm just now getting close to figuring all out for my damn self: I can't imagine how to teach a girl in the age of Snapchat and tell-me-if-I'm-ugly Youtube sessions how to be confident yet safe, assertive yet polite and kind, to be confident in but to take care of her body, to enjoy her sexuality yet consider it sacred. All I basically have to teach boys is how to not be evil and they'll get praised for it.

Maybe I was sad because it was the end of that particular adventure--this is it. For my own taste, after this I'll be too old to be pregnant again, plus we can't afford it, and I really dislike being pregnant this time around--the aching breasts, the nausea, the exhaustion, the feeling of ugliness, the forgetfulness that has gone way past charming and has entered the realm of insanity-making. Plus, I think people who "try" for a girl end up with twelve boys.

I mourn the end of the mystery, but I am probably am hating on boys a little bit, too. Instead of focusing on my own current, existing boy, who, if you follow me on Instagram, you can tell I'm totally devoted to, I think about a prototype random boy who I happen to find completely boring and even a little undesirable. He's between 9 and 12 and runs everywhere, yelling all the time, in big ugly gym shoes. He's the one at the museum who runs up to each display, mashes each button as hard and fast as he can, and then runs off again, in a grubby nondescript winter coat. He and his friends punch each other all the time. In repose, he plays video games and doesn't talk. He's messy and dull and won't want to go anywhere except maybe the Dino Exhibit at the Donald E. Stevens Convention Center. He won't see me as a person, just a dispenser of Totino's Pizza Rolls.

My other fear may be getting too into the boy thing and losing my identity as a woman. I had a boss once who had two sons, and she used to behave as if women were people from another country that she'd heard of but never visited. Before meetings my coworker and I would chitchat about stuff like a good place to get your nails done, and my boss would throw up her hands and say "Oh, I don't know girl stuff." Sometimes she'd just say "I don't do girls" and we'd feel foolish for just being girls who liked silly things like clothes and having long hair.

I know it's going to be fine--no, great--no matter what happens. Even if I were having a girl, I wouldn't be able to prepare in any meaningful way, and that's a lesson I should know by now. These boys will surprise me, and they'll teach me, and they'll be so much more than just boys. Paul, already, is such a boy, always tumbling around and falling off things, but he also likes playing with my makeup and kissing his stuffed animals on the mouth as much as possible. We already live in an age where we are starting to accept more and more that gender is a construct, and by the time my boys are of the age to start questioning and challenging the system, there will be a whole new system, one that will make those of us who pride ourselves on our open-mindedness and liberalism feel old and confused and out of touch and politically incorrect.

Maybe really deep down I'm just handling the fact that I'm going to be a mother of two and, for a while, not much more than that to these kids, which would be the case no matter what I was having. So it's probably not about what they are but who I am, which, as I get older, I know doesn't really matter to anyone in the world except me. Which is both awesome and terrifying.