The Question

I'm still here...hanging on for dear life. Baby already screwing with our traditions, we were really wanting another Sunday baby, we don't have much to talk about at parties and saying all our kids were born on Sunday was kind of cool while it lasted.


But how about some more hormonal bitchiness?.....



One thing I will be glad to be rid of after this pregnancy ends is the people who constantly ask "Is it a boy or a girl?" Why does this fact matter to so many people?

I find it strange that Hilda at the grocery store asks me every week and I know she remembers me because I gave her a green bean recipe that she thanks me for every time. I go to my MOPS group every other week and those girls STILL ask me if I have found out yet, like I have 24 hour access to an ultrasound machine. I have explained, patiently, that we really did want to be surprised and they just don't get it.

What I like even less is comments such as:

Are you going to try for a girl if this one is a boy?
Don't you want to be prepared to be disappointed in case it's a boy?
I will die if you have another boy!
It will be so sad if you don't have a girl!
I'll feel so sorry for you if it's a boy.
I am so lucky to have one of each, I wish you could experience that.

Do people even realize how that comes across?

A mother of one of Jacob's classmates approached me the other day to let me know that she was pregnant as well and, of course, asked the "What is it?" question, to which I replied, "a baby, that's all we know." and she went on for twenty minutes about how she was expecting a girl after having two "wild" boys and how she would have keeled over dead if she were having another boy and won't it be horrible for me to find out at the birth that it's a boy? Yada, yada, yada...she is so lucky to be having a girl she must have done something right to be rewarded that way. Since she had her ultrasound at 16 weeks, I am secretly hoping that girl sprouts a pe*is, but what? I seriously don't think she is a malicious person and maybe I took all of that completely wrong, but I found the whole conversation unsettling....like, I don't want to show up at the kindergarten graduation with a third boy for fear of looking like the poor, poor woman with the three boys...let us pray for her.

Sometimes, now, when people pose the question to me, I have started saying "It's a boy" or "It's a girl" just to gauge the reactions. If I am alone and say it's a boy or a girl, the asker is pretty ambivalent, if I have even just one boy with me and say it's a boy, I usually get some head shaking, or tsking, or the inevitable, "you can always try again". If I say it's a girl they are practically throwing confetti at me. Saying you are having a girl always makes everyone happy. Why is that?

I know, I shouldn't take this personally, but I kind of do. I mean, this is my kid we're talking about. I created it, gestated it, gave up blue cheese for it. It's a part of our family no matter what parts it possesses. Why do people want to make me feel badly for not conforming to society's idea of a perfect family? Maybe I do want a girl. Maybe I don't. Either way, it just makes me feel bad like I'm disappointing everyone and purposely going against the norm.

My new answer: It's a baby. Period. It will be loved by it's family and protected by it's brothers. It might wear dresses or it's brother's overalls, either way it's ours, it belongs to us and we are happy about it.

One day I'll quit being hormonal...menopause is right around the corner isn't it?




Don't you feel so sorry for me?