Through the magic of ultrasound, we found out the sex of our baby yesterday. By the way, I’m not telling which it is yet. Since we had favored names picked out years ahead of time, this information suddenly locked one of them in. But a question from the doctor got me thinking about pre-selecting the names of one’s children.

Knowing what to call the baby adds a small layer of personality onto my unborn spawn. Should something happen to the pregnancy, God forbid, it wouldn’t feel right to use that name again on our second attempt. We aren’t the type of people to have a funeral for a fetus that never saw the light of day. Even so, the name becomes inextricably attached to the child, born or not. To have a healthy baby later on and assign them the same name as their unborn siblings is a morbidity I don’t have it in me to commit. But what can you even do about that?

Keeping the sex of the baby a surprise for yourselves is one solution, but it is only a half-measure. In the event of a late-term tragedy, you will almost certainly find out which you were going to have. And suddenly, the identity clings and there’s no avoiding the thoughts of who this child would have been to you.

I guess the best we can do is take care of ourselves and maybe don’t set any preferred monikers in stone. Thankfully, we haven’t dealt with such a thing personally. This is just where my mind wandered when driving away from the clinic. Huh. It turns out, getting closer to being someone’s dad puts me in a worst-case-scenario state of mind. I’m sure nothing bad will come of that.