Tuesday, May 7, 2013

That is SO a penis.


We didn’t find out the baby’s gender when we were pregnant with Quinn. We just let the anticipation and suspense build until he was born. It drove other people crazy that we weren’t finding out, but we loved the not knowing. I mean, really loved it. Er, at least I did.

“How can you not want to know?!” people would demand and look at me like I was nuts.  And then I would say, “Um. Like this. Watch. This is me. Not knowing. And still functioning like a non-crazy person. So stop looking at me like that.”

Okay, I didn’t really say that, but I wanted to. I mean, seriously, are pink and blue the only paint color options for nurseries? What year is it?

“I’m a planner,” people would tell me. “I would have to know.” Yeah, well, I’m a huge planner, too, but whether it’s a boy or a girl, the baby’s still coming, so how much does the gender really affect the planning? You still need a shit ton of baby stuff. You just get it in any color that isn’t pink. Easy. I mean, are gender-neutral baby clothes, blankets and nurseries really that atrocious? ‘Cause I think Q’s gender-neutral giraffe nursery is darling.

Here’s another reason why not knowing the gender is awesome. Instead of buying you a bunch of baby clothes that your child will only wear once or not at all, you get stuff you actually need. From your registry. Instead of being sucked in by the racks of irresistibly cute baby clothing, your family and friends stick to the list that you spent weeks agonizing over conveniently preparing for them. They buy you diapers and wipes and bottles and changing pads and crib sheets and Diaper Genies and Pack-N-Plays and bouncy seats and swings and strollers and bath tubs and car seats and gift cards burp cloths and and and and….

All that stuff gets ridiculously expensive when you have to buy it all yourself, so it’s nice when other people buy it for you. The baby clothes are cheap and fun to shop for, so I would rather buy them myself anyway. So we ended up with a few white, yellow and green baby clothes and almost everything we registered for. Then the week after Q was born, Hubs went out and bought a bunch of blue clothes and blankets. Babies spend their first few weeks in onesies and swaddles anyway.

But… as much as I love anticipation, we’re going to find out Baby Dragon’s gender. I didn’t say there was anything wrong with finding out. I just said there’s nothing wrong with not finding out. Really what I want to know is whether or not we can get rid of the numerous giant bins of boy's clothes in the garage and free up a ton of storage space that we so desperately need or if we keep the boys clothes and save some money. We officially find out the gender at our eighteen-week ultrasound in three more weeks.

But… we think we may already know… (See, this is where I would normally start building the anticipation… except that I sort of already gave it away in the title of this post… because I really wanted a blog post with the word “penis” in the title… because some things are even more fun than anticipation…. Anyway….)

A couple weeks ago, we went for our nuchal translucency ultrasound. The technician asked if we were going to find out the gender of the baby, and we said yes. Hubs half-jokingly asked her if she could tell us that day, not expecting it to be a possibility. Surprisingly, the technician said she could try. “It’s not always possible to tell this early,” she said, “but when I can tell, I’m almost always right.”

She made a few quick swipes of her magic wand across the cold jelly on my belly, and then she said, “Ah, do you see what I see?”

And there on the monitor was this:



“IT"S A BOY!” Hubs and I shouted. Then I said, “But it’s too soon to know for sure, right? So that could just be the umbilical cord, right?”

“There’s a 55% chance that I’m right,” said the technician. Then she paused for dramatic effect and said with a smile, “But that’s not the umbilical cord.”

She was very careful not to come right out and say it was a boy or confirm the existence of a penis, but…

… that is SO a penis.