I thought long and hard, almost daily, for a few weeks/months actually and although before I was pregnant I was adamant that I’d never find out, I quickly realised just how much I did want to know. How actually I don’t really like surprises and I’m a planner, I love things like getting a nursery ready in advance, looking at clothes and feeling prepared. I spoke to lots of friends who had found out who all said it made it feel more real knowing and getting their heads around if they were having a son or a daughter. Could I really wait until the summer not knowing? And not really wanting to properly imagine the baby for fear of starting to think it was one sex or the other, then perhaps getting a surprise at delivery? The delivery day I feel for me will be more than special, and overwhelming enough when meeting our baby without having the added ‘it’s a boy/it’s a girl’ surprise thrown in. {although this was the biggest reason for those who said not to find out, that hearing their partner tell them was still one of their favourite memories}.

My husband wanted it to be really special if we were to find out ahead of time, which I value so much, so we agreed not to find out in our 20 week scan {side note - I'd also heard stories about how people have got it wrong from the scan as it's not 100% guaranteed or easy to spot} but to get the sonographer to write it down for us, if she could tell, so we could open it at a later time that felt memorable and special with just us two. In the meantime, I also emailed our harmony test correspondent because that test is 99.9% accurate, so we asked if she could look back at our results. At the time we said we didn’t want to know, but now we did. Luckily she didn’t mind at all and sent us a letter with it - funny story though, when emailing her from California we had to forward the emails to my friend to open for us as we were worried it might have spilled the secret in the email body which we didn’t want to see at that point! My friend then messaged to say ‘it’s fine she just needs ... or it’s been sent to you’. Andddd then my mum was checking on some post for us and opened it, thinking it was a hospital letter and luckily saw the first page without looking at the next where she would have seen! We had to get her to promise us that she didn’t know, and I totally believe that she didn’t.

Also, at our first 20 week scan the sonographer couldn’t see the baby’s sex anyway as she was laying in an awkward position so we had to go back to complete the scan! Ben said if they couldn’t see it on the next scan it should be a sign that we shouldn’t know ha. On our follow up, she could see it this time and put it in the card we took with us {a lovely follower on Instagram sent it to me and personalised it}

So for a couple of weeks we actually had two envelopes sat at home, in a drawer in our study with the sacred info in! Ben taped them up just in case I got tempted, but as much as I was desperate to know by this stage, I knew I’d regret it if I opened it willy nilly without a story to remember it properly. Our friends and family were shocked that we hadn’t opened it yet, I think they were more desperate to know than us by this point!


So it was decided that we’d take them to the Maldives with us, our last big trip as just us two and one where we’d open the envelopes during our first evening there. We sat out on our deck at sunset before dinner and I felt sick with nerves. At this point, I hadn’t got an inkling either way, I hadn’t wanted to imagine girl or boy for fear of feeling disappointed if it was the opposite to what we expected. There’s no way I could have chosen, I had no preference at all and still just feel so so happy and grateful to be having a baby, girl or boy. It seemed more likely that it would be a boy, for as I’ve mentioned before, allll of Ben’s family are boys and there hasn’t been a girl born to any male Sterling for years. So I guess deep down we both had expected a boy? We opened the card from the sonographer and saw the tick in the baby girl box. Oh my god!!! We actually filmed our reactions and laughed watching it back justttt how shocked we both looked. But so so delighted of course. The second letter from the NIPT tests confirmed it! Baby girl!! I cried at this point. And then spent the whole of dinner and the walk to/from that night and in fact most of the next day just repeating Baby Girl. I don’t think either of us could believe it and it took a while to sink in. Then that feeling of huge responsibility, whatever sex you’re having, to raise a son or a daughter. It definitely made it all the more real. 

We had a couple of days of just us knowing which was really nice, deciding how to share the news to our families. Originally we’d thought we’d hide it in a cake, my birthday is at the end of March, but my mum was suddenly pressuring us as to when they would know. And it would have been so hard for me to keep it a secret from everyone for the next few weeks when we got home, plus cakes and balloons have been done I guess. So then we thought about writing a message in the sand, filming it and writing ‘it’s a boy’ then going back to add in the ‘not’ a second later just to add some fun into it. But then we saw a drone shoot going on at the resort for a couple which looked really cool and would be much better than we could film ourselves. It turns out that the drone package comes as standard for Asian honeymoons, but that we could hire it for a small fee! We were so excited and had a lot of fun with Sameeh filming the message from up above the island. As a result, it’s now a video/memory to treasure from our trip forever and we loved sending it to everyone back home for them to see what the message said.

It was such lovely news to share and everyone was so happy to know and get excited.

My friend Lizzie text me to ask if I could picture everything about her, our baby girl, already, they found out a few weeks earlier they were having a boy, but weirdly no I still can’t! Everyday I’m picturing more of our future together though, raising a daughter and thinking about all that comes with that, the things I want to teach her, the responsibility of raising a strong girl, telling her that anything is possible, wanting to give her a thirst for knowledge. In the same way that I’d tell a son that too though, I don’t really want to draw or attach big things to their gender or stereotypes. Not in an extreme gender fluid, so new age kind of way, but just because it shouldn’t be this big difference. Son or daughter, we would feel the same and just feel such a huge privilege to raise either.



Of course, I can’t pretend that I’m not excited about starting to decorate the nursery now and add some colour in to the neutral whites and greys. To go down the shopping hole of girls clothes and cute headbands and floral bloomers. My love of pink is no secret. But it’s about so, so much more than that.


Baby girl, we cannot wait more than ever now to meet you! And it couldn’t have been a more memorable trip or way to find out. One day we'll show her the video and tell her that happy day that we found out that our baby bee would be our daughter!

Will share the rest of our trip soon.