One day when I was pregnant with my second child, I went shopping for a bra for my newly glorious boobs. There was another mom-to-be in the store, and I gave her that small, conspiratorial smile knocked-up women often give one another. She smiled back vaguely, and I was surprised when she spoke: "Do you know what you're having?" I shook my head no. "Hoping for one or the other?" she pressed. Ahh, I thought. This woman's like me: She cares too much.

And so, in the spirit of camaraderie, I gave her the answer I usually reserved for my closest friends: " Hoping for a girl" The woman nodded and gave her belly a little pat: " I was too," she said wistfully. She wasn't the first person who'd confessed her preference for a daughter to me: One girlfriend of mine told me she was "thinking pink" because she'd been especially close to her mom; another said the idea of her husband nurturing a tiny girl was irresistibly sweet; a third laughed, "It's all about the booty!" And a feminist writer I talked to gave all this girl-craziness the best spin I'd heard: "Women of our generation," she said, "want daughters precisely because we like who we are."

My continuing bias wasn't so easy for me to explain. I'd secretly wanted a girl—a Daisy or an Ione—the first time around, too. But that had been different; I could chalk it up to fear of the unknown. I grew up with one sister and no boys in the immediate family. Having a female child, I'd imagined, would make mothering less daunting. I'd simply do for my girl (or, hopefully, girls) all the things my mom had done to make Catherine and me feel so loved as kids: I'd sew outfits for teddy bears (I could barely thread a needle, but I'd learn!), indulge epic quests for life-altering prom dresses, weave pony manes (let there be ponies!) into dozens of tiny braids before horse shows...

I had been sure I'd be out of my element with a boy. Was I macho enough? Resilient enough? What if he became obsessed with balls (the athletic kind)? I was awkward around balls (any kind). I still remember being pregnant with Finn, knowing he was a he, and seeing on my doctor's desk a framed photo of his wife and four boys. The woman was lean and tan and had a what-doesn't-kill-you-makes-you-stronger jut to her smile. Forget the kids—she seemed like a different species from me.

Thankfully, by the time I got pregnant with number two, I'd figured out that my fears of inadequacy had been mostly unwarranted—and that all the stereotypes I'd been carrying around were pretty much a load of hooey. I had all the tools I needed for raising a boy: patience, energy, imagination, and boundless affection. And yet...

Damn, how I yearned for a daughter! That yearning reached new extremes the night I found myself—eight months along with Finn's mystery sibling—sneaking out of bed at 3 A.M. to Google "gender selection." Never mind that Ted and I had always said we wanted only two kids. Never mind that our lives already felt impossibly, exhaustingly full. If push came to ? another boy, maybe we'd just order up a girl next time! According to the Web, there were plenty of ways to do this—or come close: There was a sperm-sorting process called MicroSort in medical trials (a friend of mine was considering this one), the intercourse-timing Shettles method, preimplantation genetic diagnosis via IVF, and another sperm-separating process called the Ericsson method. There were calendars and kits and old wives' tales ... There were options.

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