"It"

In the early days of my pregnancy, people would ask us what we were calling the baby.  I usually replied "the baby".  Most friends were disappointed.  We weren't using any of the million cute/strange place holder names that I've seen people use for their unborn.

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Some of them are based on what the baby looked like in early ultrasounds.  Some are silly names that the parents wouldn't get attached to and be tempted to use when the baby was born.  (Though the friend of a friend who used Ziggy did get attached and ended up using it!)  Some are just cute little nicknames.

For some reason, a cute little nickname never felt right to us.  Maybe it's related to the fact that we don't have cutesy nicknames for each other.  So we just went with "the baby".  It may be boring, but it serves it's purpose.  Early on, Ross was convinced that we were having a girl.  We'd decided on a name for a girl before we even got married, so he'd occasionally refer to the baby by that name.  I warned him frequently that it might not be her yet- first because I was worried about miscarrying and didn't want to have given the baby a name already and secondly because we didn't know for certain that it was a girl.

So what to call "the baby" when referencing the baby?  "He or she" is so unwieldy.  And I refuse to refer to my unborn child as "it".  Because Ross was so convinced we were having a girl, we decided to go with "she"- with the disclaimer that it was only a guess and that "we would call her a she until someone tells us different".

What place-holder names do you like?
Did you use one specific one or rotate through several?