gender announcement: baby number two

Photography by Hannah Grace

Our first baby, Christian, died, leaving a nursery full of clothes and blankets, bits of blue, plaid, and stripes. Today, after our ultrasound, I took all of those blue bits and put them into a container to go up to our attic and wait for a baby brother to fill them up. It was horribly sad, and still exactly what I needed. A new baby. A new gender. A fresh, happy beginning to our family. A daughter. A girl.

Charlotte Pear Nowak is our first daughter's name, and, trust me, this one's a girl. She's a perfect blend of feisty and shy, kicking like crazy, but also hiding her face from view with delicate hands.

We chose Charlotte together, for no sentimental reason, but purely because it's regal (and we had it picked last pregnancy, before Kate made it actually royal) and also adorable. We might call her Charlotte, Charlie, Charlie Pear, Lottie, Little Lottie, or Charper. Mostly, Charlotte. How can you possibly know before the wiggling baby sits in your arms?

Pear, is a weirder name, we know. Charlotte is old-fashioned and traditional. Pear sounds like we're trying to be celebrities, which we aren't. When we decided on Charlotte as a first name (and Charlie as a nick-name), we tried a variety of our other favorite girl's names after it, but came up undecided. My time in England gifted me a rather lovely teddy bear named Charlie Bear, so we kept calling our future daughter that. "Someday when we have Charlie Bear..." My maiden name is Pearson, the first half of that being Pear, and Matt fell in love with the idea of being able to call his daughter Charlie Pear.

They told us she's measuring bigger than last time and could come around December 19th (my Grandpa's birthday), but they didn't change our due date. So, we still have our Christmas baby, and now she has a name.