Keeping a Secret

Once we were confident enough that I wasn't at risk for another miscarriage, my husband and I excitedly spread the news of our expected baby-to-be to everybody we could think of. The most excited recipient of this news was probably my mother-in-law. I imagine that if both of my parents were alive today that they would have been equally elated. My childhood best friend's mother stepped in to fill that role for us, though. To this day I refer to her as my second mom, my mother's best friend, and call her K-Mom directly.

As soon as the cat was out of the bag, of course we got flooded with The Questions. The top two questions during my entire pregnancy were "When are you due?" and "Is it a boy or a girl?" These usually are the most common questions a pregnant woman gets, and from my experience they are also the most annoying. I felt like I was repeating myself several billion times over, often to the same people. What made it even more annoying was the fact that I did not have an answer for question number two, by choice. My secret, sadistic glee is that it annoyed my mother-in-law even more.

I understand that with today's medical technology that it is possible to determine the sex of an unborn baby only weeks after conception. Somewhere around 20 weeks, I think, is when it's most accurate. But I'm one of those rare breed of old-fashioned anti-girly girls who actually did not want to know the gender of my baby before she was born. Why? Nobody really seemed to understand my reasons why, but here they are:

1. I wanted to be surprised. I had dreamed up this preconceived vision of my future in which I was pushing and pushing in the delivery room and the doctor announces, like he's unwrapping a sparkly new Christmas present full of excitement and joy, "It's a boy!" Or "It's a girl!" Either way, I didn't want to hear, "Yep. Here's your baby girl/boy." Like it was just another day at the office of predictable, boring business.

2. I hate gender stereotypes. I hate that girls are expected to wear pink and purple, and that boys are expected to wear blue/brown/green. When I was a little girl, I didn't wear dresses if I could avoid being forced into them. I wore jeans and tee-shirts, hand-me-downs from my two older brothers. I played in the dirt. My favorite things in the world were Voltron, Pound Puppies and The Monkees. I got skinned knees. I liked my hair cut short. I wanted more than anything in the world to be a boy. I didn't, and still don't, want my child to be predefined and expected to conform to a specific gender stereotype.

3. I plan on having more than one child, which is why I wanted to avoid the onslaught of gender stereotyped products. I wanted the peace of mind and freedom to be able to choose neutral decor and clothing, to request it specifically on my baby registry. Not to have to search for butteflies or race car decorated accessories. Besides, I like neutral tones myself. It's more calming to me than OMG BLUE or OMG PINK that seem to dominate nurseries these days. I also want to be able to reuse all these baby items like the stroller, rocker/swing, bouncer seat, bedding and clothes. If I end up being cursed to have all girls, I'll cry.

4. I wanted to avoid a possible slew of pink, or at the very least postpone it for as long as possible. Of course, as soon as my daughter was born, my mother-in-law sent us piles of pink bombs in the mail. Clothing and toys and everything else girly she could possibly get her hands on. I. Hate. Pink. Naturally, my daughter, now 10-months-old, loves it. And I confess, I do a little joy dance whenever I see something frilly that I know my daughter would look cute in. We've phased out neutral. So if I do have any boys, hopehopehope, I'm going to have to buy more clothes anyway.

5. I get off on torturing people. It thrilled me to no end with evil shivers of happiness every time my mother-in-law begged and pleaded with her son to find out the gender of the baby and just tell her already! My husband was tempted, damn tempted, every time. We both knew, however, that he would be incapable of keeping a secret, so I never let him give into that temptation. They both got what they wanted anyway. They wanted a girl. Me? I wanted a boy. Still. That doesn't mean I'm not happy with what I did get. I love my daughter to itty bitty bits and pieces times a gabillionty. And I still smile like the Grinch Who Stole Christmas whenever I recall my mother-in-law trying to pressure us into finding out.

So all through my pregnancy I referred to the mysterious fetus growing in my belly as "the baby" or "it." My husband wasn't comfortable with the "it" factor, though. Since he was hoping beyond hope for a girl, he consistently called the baby in my belly "she." Just to counter him, I sometimes said "he" to balance things out, but mostly I remained neutral about the gender all around. I wonder if his insistence made it so. He and his mother said, "It's a girl." And hell, even my subconscious agreed. Whenever I dreamed about the baby, before she was born, in my dreams she was always a girl. That's even where I found her name....