"It"

As we continue on our adoption path, we will not know, likely for many months, the gender (or age, for that matter) of our future child. And, even when we do find out these things, we won't be sharing what we know until the child is officially ours when we arrive in India for the adoption. The biggest reason for not sharing is basically that we don't want to get too attached until we know for sure. So when we get there, and have Baby in our arms, we will be posting the stats and pictures likely on this site and via email, etc.

The reason for this post is to actually clarify how I will refer to Baby until he or she has a name. There are lots of people who will not call their child "It" - I personally don't have a problem with this practice. Sure, you could say "he or she" every time you talk about "him or her" but that's a lot of extra letters. I do not think of "It" as a genderless child, or sub-human, or anything like that (those are arguments I have heard against using the word "It"). My child is a unique and special and wonderful little person, created by God just for our family, and until we know specifically who he or she is, we will be referring to this little person as "It" - for no other reason than convenience and ease of communication. I think if I were pregnant, or we knew the age of the child we'd be getting, I would probably be inclined to call "It" "Baby" or "Kiddo" or whatever, but since we don't even know that, in this case, "It" seems like the best choice.