I wanted to provide some background for the name of my blog.

It took me awhile to come up with a name that was creative, but described my experience as a mama.

Growing up, my mom always told me that she chose not to find out my gender when she was pregnant with me. She said there is no greater surprise in life then the day you get to find out- birth.

Following her footsteps, my husband respected my decision to wait to find out the gender of our baby. The eight months seemed like they took forever. In fact, I considered doing an at home gender test a time or two because I didn’t think I could make it. During our anatomy scan, the tech casually said he multiple times under her breath and we were all convinced that she ruined the surprise.

All of the old wives tales gave us a split result. Including the heart rate…right in the middle EVERY time.

All my co-workers said boy.

At the baby shower we had our guests wear their guess….majority boy.

The only genetic hope that we had was family history. After my father-in-law passed away unexpectedly, my husband and I looked into our family trees. His family tree (since he is the determinant of gender) showed that EVERY male in his family had a girl as his first child since 1913. This was of course true for his dad, uncles and brother and the cycle hadn’t been broken.

Fast forward to the day of labor and delivery when I was pretty sure that I was having a boy. We had brought all gender neutral outfits that came with a bow and a hat, just to be safe. We had a girl and a boy name picked.

Our plan was for my husband to announce what it was when he knew. After a few long hard days of induction, my husband announced

Well we have a baby Ellisyn.

And that is how I created my name… The unexpected girl mama.