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A few years back on Mother’s Day weekend, my family and I decided to find out the gender of our soon-to-be bundle of joy a little early.

Rather than wait those few extra weeks for our sonographer to reveal the big news at 20 weeks, we thought it’d be fun to head to one of those prenatal imaging clinics to find out what our third baby would be.

My first child — being my stepson — didn’t need much guesswork in my new parenthood role, and I was absolutely certain I’d have a girl when I became pregnant with my daughter. So I assumed if I had a girl once, I would have a girl again, because that’s clearly how science and pregnancy works.

Nope. It was a he — a little sweet boy.

A few weeks later at our 20-week checkup, I took the wind out of the sails and said we knew we were having a boy and asked if their fancier machine could figure out what his hair color would be. However, my joke went unnoticed as the sonographer continued to take more and more pictures of the top of our baby’s head. This wasn’t my first rodeo, so her silence and the extra time she was taking had all my panic buttons blinking red.

And then our doctor confirmed it: choroid plexus cysts. My baby boy had brain cysts.