It Looks Cramped In There

Today was the big ultrasound - the one where we could find out the gender of the baby. Typically, getting to the hospital we found that they didn't have the necessary paperwork to make sure that my insurance paid for the procedure. Thirty minutes (and a very unhealthy mom-to-be irrtation later) we were seen by the doctor. The doctor spent quite a lot of time checking the growing creature in my body and though I couldn't really make out said feet or legs, assured us that they were there.
The baby was clearly growing from our earlier visits, even just of 13 days ago, but my husband was not impressed by my carrying capabilities.

"It looks cramped in there," he said, as though he weren't the same man laughing at the growing rotundness of my body.

Then came the moment I had been dreading: "100% it's a boy," the doctor said. I had braced myself for this over the past two weeks ever since my husband said I went almost white with shock when my OBGYN suggested there were the signs of male antatomy in our last sonogram.

"I saw the look on your face," he said, "you were disappointed." Being confronted with the fact that I could be disappointed in a child even before was born was a sobering thought given all the pressure my parents placed on me not to get pregnant, hooked or drugs, or drop out of school. I did not ever think I would be that kind of mother. But then I didn't really think about having a son.

I find myself participating in a kind of strange reverse sexism: I'm not a man hater but because of the tension my mother and lots of other women like her went through to have boys, I resist the idea of a male child, an heir, the eldest, as though I've betrayed all my feminist teaching or beliefs. There are only girls in my family: my sister had three girls, my mother two, all of our cousins but two boys (one of them my brother) are girls. I never once entertained the idea that this truly could be 50/50 male/female.

My father-in-law's glee at the news - he was the first person we called when leaving the hospital - was predictable and sweet. "You are lucky," he said but he didn't mean it in a malicious way.

I was sad for the girl that I won't get to build up or listen to or empower. But the other morning, the morning after the first possibility of a boy was raised, I saw my three year old neighbor riding his bike in the driveway. This child is so sweet and good looking, you would lock him up so someone wouldn't take him. When I saw him, my heart just clenched and I sent my husband a text.

Okay, if he looks like him, okay.

The truth is you'll love whoever you have or at least that's what I've been led to believe. We'll see.

But life does love to throw you surprises. The easy pregnancy thus far was one welcome one. The news of a boy, the second.