Tiny purple bows, no bigger across than the width of my thumb. Miniature pink roses with petals almost indistinguishable from one another. Ruffles as fluffy and undulating as clouds. What could be scary about these? Nothing. Except that they frequently come attached to a baby girl. Utterly terrifying. Case in point: I painted the new baby's nursery pink. At first I hesitated, as my son's nursery was a gender-neutral shade of golden yellow. But when I found out she was a her, a pale pink room popped into my mind's eye. After some light deliberation, I decided to go with it. The color turned out what I am calling Pinker Than Planned -- what I envisioned was a pale, mature, blush pink that was more suggestion than color. What I got was closer to cotton candy pink that screamed "Look at me, I'mmmmmm piiiiiink!" in a Binky the Clown voice. Not only was this Not Perfect (and I tend to demand that Everything Be Perfect), but it made me worry. Would growing u...

Three years ago today I found myself sitting in a darkened exam room, clutching an ultrasound image, crying. Crying so hard the ultrasound technician excused herself to "give me a moment." These weren't tears of happiness or relief, but of a disappointment I was unable to contain: I had just been told that I was having a boy. What kind of horrible mother are you?  you're probably thinking. I wondered that too. For three-and-a-half years I had struggled to have a child, and out of that struggle came a miracle. Yet here I was feeling like what I had graciously been given wasn't enough. I didn't just want a baby . I wished for a daughter . I had some reasons for feeling this way, flimsy though they seem now. First, I don't know (or care) much about things little boys are typically interested in -- dinosaurs and dump trucks and sports, bodily emissions and pratfalls and comic books. What would my son and I bond over? How would I ever connect with him? Se...