Baby's First Bling - NYTimes.com Last week we pierced our 6-month-old daughter's ears. I know what you're thinking: what kind of parents are you? And if you're from Miami: How could you have waited so long? It's true, Amalía is the only female baby born to a member of our hypnobirthing class who made it that long without earrings. I never pictured myself piercing my baby's ears. I grew up in Massachusetts, where I had to wait until I was 10 to get my ears pierced at a Rob Roy salon. My WASP mother didn't pierce her ears until she was well into her 40s, having been told by my grandmother that only gypsies had pierced ears. In the Greek mountain village where my father and aunts were raised during the middle of the last century, earrings only existed on the ears of Turkish harem girls in legends. In the Greek village where my father was raised, earrings only existed on the ears of Turkish harem girls in legends. But Amalía is half Nicaraguan. Where her father is from, they pierce the ears of female infants in the hospital as a matter of course, much the way the circumcision of male infants is handled in the United States. It is traditional for a baby girl's godparents and relatives to give her earrings as a symbol of how adored she is. And there, a baby can be dressed up in pink butterflies, but if she's earring-less, people will still call her a beautiful baby boy. That's not just true of Nicaragua, I learned in a hospital-sponsored prenatal class, where all of the other moms were Colombian, Venezuelan or Cuban-American. Moreover, piercing babies" ears is the custom of the country where we all now live, which is to say Miami. When the visiting pediatrician noted that after the vaccinations given to 2-month-olds, a baby was free to fly and to get her ears pierced, an audible gasp rose around the room. "I guess we'll have to take her little earrings out of the overnight bag," a daddy-to-be said, sadly, as the other parents commiserated. The truth is, even those of us here who aren't Latin are Latin by association. All three doctors in my obstetrics practice were Latin men and they all kissed me on the cheek at the start and end of a visit. A New York friend told me, "We call that malpractice here," but I grew to love it. People like to call Miami the gateway to Latin America. For a while I called it the gateway to North America, insisting that the city, for all intents and purposes, is Latin American. But now, having lived in Miami for a year and a half, I know that it's its own little nation, one that takes Latin traditions and makes them over with the addition of a few beachy, body-conscious touches (consider the diet mojito, made with Bacardi and Splenda). When I took Amalía in for a checkup and asked our pediatrician about infant earrings, she told me that she resisted doing piercing "for years," but knew a baby whose aunt pierced her ears in the hospital "right after she was born, with no medical personnel around." Faced with the kind of demand that had desperate relatives performing stealth piercings in hospital rooms, the doctor came up with what I call the Miami Compromise. She began offering "beauty visits"; no medical tests or evaluations were performed, but she would pierce the baby's ears, provided she was vaccinated and at least 3 months old, and the earrings used were one of the sterilized infant pairs her office provides. Before Rush Limbaugh starts thinking of horrible names to call these babies, I'd like to point out that the piercing is not covered by health insurance; a "beauty visit" costs $50 out of pocket, earrings included. I was secretly relieved that the 3-month mandate bought me some time to consider the decision. It's true, I felt nothing but resentment at having been forced to wait until an arbitrary age to have my ears pierced, but I wasn't sure I wanted to slap earrings onto my baby before she was old enough to express a desire for them. While I like to think Amalía enjoys shattering expectations and blurring gender stereotypes, was I being cruel to deny my daughter something that everyone around her seemed to be consider a God-given right for a female? And while I wanted her to embrace Nicaraguan and Miami culture, I couldn't help worrying about what my mother would say. Not one to suffer silently, I agonized about the decision out loud and online. "Consider her personality: is she the earring type?" an older female friend suggested. So I looked for clues. Amalía flirts with every stranger who passes by, male, female or canine, and grins and poses if you point a cellphone or camera her way. Her favorite pastime is to look at herself in the mirror. And when we visited my parents in Massachusetts and had to put a snow hat on her, she didn't rip the fluffy white beret off her head like most babies would. She smiled and looked around, as if waiting for applause. By the time she was 6 months old, I knew: this baby was the earring type. "I'm going to mark dots on her ears where I'll put the earrings, and then you can weigh in on if the placement is right or not, so we all share the responsibility," the doctor, wielding a pen, told me and my husband. An aunt had warned me to make sure the earring holes weren't placed too low or they'd get even lower as Amalía's ears grew. The doctor confirmed that this was good advice; she knew people who had gotten plastic surgery to repair low-hanging piercings. Once we approved the location, she shot the gold studs we had picked out into our baby's ears. Amalía cried for a minute or so during the procedure - less than she did for the flu shot that followed a few weeks later. Then she smiled on cue as we started snapping her picture. "She looks great," the doctor said before leaving the room. But I can tell you guys aren't from Miami - everyone here goes with the fake diamonds. Townies welcomes submissions at townies@nytimes.com. Eleni N. Gage is the author of the memoir "North of Ithaka" and the novel "Other Waters."