Gender Day, 20 Weeks

Baby's profile, left side.

The big 20 weeks ultrasound day came and went, and it went well! We saw our fuzzy, grainy black and white baby wiggling around and flipping back and forth. We also saw them in every imaginable (and unimaginable) angle and form. Stretched out, tucking their limbs beneath them, lying on their stomach, side, back and even shoving their butt right in the camera. Butt jokes already. Nice.

There was lots of shots taken by the ultrasound tech that I couldn't not decipher. Measurements were taken of the head, the spine, feet, hands, arms and legs. She guessed baby was about 12 ounces now. She took photos of baby's face, checking the nose and mouth for the absence of cleft palat. Everything was good. The heart has four chambers, the diaphragm is forming, the baby is swallowing and practicing breathing the way they should. Our little person is growing into a real baby and that is what matters. The most important thing this ultrasound revealed is the fact that we have a healthy human growing inside of me.

They baby is healthy and we are happy about our upcoming adventure in parenthood. This is why we have decided to keep the gender a secret. I know it's not important. KIDDING. It's a boy. Awesome, right!? We are so excited. I think Paul was happy that the lights were so dim in the ultrasound room so no one could see his 'watery' eyes. I love him. I told him that is why they keep the room dark, so the dad's don't look like wussies in front on their wives and the office staff. Kidding again. I did tell him that, but he knew I was just trying to make him laugh.

Butt, legs and wiener!!

So looking back, I think I did know I was carrying a boy. That was my very first gut feeling. Everything after that was me over thinking something that couldn't actually be determined by reason, research or knowledge. I thought it was a boy. Then I thought, no, I probably only think that because I want a boy. It's probably a girl. If it's a girl that will be tough for me. Like my mother always said when I was being bratty. "Someday you'll have a daughter that is just like you, you'll see." Oh. Shit. Could I have a daughter just like me? Oh, for the love of God. Scary.

For the record, my mother was hoping we were having a girl. Still hoping for her revenge.

So for the last 4 plus months I have been mentally preparing myself for having a girl, even though my gut told me I was having a boy. I picked out girl names, thought of girlie mommy child scenarios and pictured stupid girlie pink Disney princess nightmare clothes and decor. So what now? It's going to take a few days to get used to calling 'it' a 'he'. and we are happy!

When baby revealed the gender I think we were so happy just to know them a little better than the moment before. I think both my husband and I would have had the same ecstatic and emotional reaction if they would have told us the baby was a girl. Just that much closer to know this person we have created felt amazing. Thank you modern science.

So now what? Now I imagine life with a son. I picture all the things I wasn't allowing myself to before when I was thinking it was a girl. The coolest part is now Paul and I can get serious about picking out a name. I guess I'll have to put my favorite girl name, Louise, on the back burner. I'll save it for if I'm ever pregnant with my mother's revenge.

Little Donny Dreams

Tomorrow is the big day. The day we've all been waiting for. We couldn't be more excited. It is ultrasound day and the 20 week mark. The halfway point. Five months along. This is really going by faster than I expected.

The dreams I've been having are strange to say the least. I spent last night searching through a giant Walmart/Costco hybrid with ceilings as high as the sky. Just trying to find some low-sodium chicken flavored top ramen while strangers stop me and ask me unrelated questions that I don't know how to answer. My dreams are so bonkers. I know they don't mean anything. They are just my brain exercising, working things out. That is why when I'm having baby dreams, I don't think they are some sign that is telling me the baby's gender.

The other night I had a dream we had the baby. I was carrying baby around and suddenly it dawned on me, hey the baby is here, I don't have to wait for the ultrasound to find out the gender. (Makes perfect sense, right?) So I know it's time for a diaper change anyway and I call Paul over to look and see if they're a boy or a girl. I take off the diaper and Paul says "It's a girl!" I look closely and correct him, no it's a boy. I point at the tiniest, most microscopic mosquito sized penis. We both smile that we have a healthy boy. I move the baby to the couch onto a changing blanket to put on a new diaper. Suddenly that penis is a huge man sized one. It stretches from baby's groin past his chin. No denying the gender any longer.

I wondered to myself how I didn't notice this before. I was kind of frightened by it really. Then it dawned on me. How the hell am I going to put a diaper over this thing? What will I tell my family! Oh my god that thing has veins the size of night crawlers! What do I do now that I have a Little Donny on my hands. Oh, boy. Once the diaper was in place everything seemed normal. I remember dreading the thought of the next diaper change before I woke up.

Watch Little Donny Sketch Click that link to watch the hilarious sketch from the Upright Citizen Brigade Show.

So, needless to say I don't believe I'm psychic. At least I hope not. I wouldn't mind a boy but I hope he doesn't have elephantitis of the penis. Only time will tell.

Now, it's the final countdown to ultrasound time. It's like Christmas eve. I just want to go to sleep so it will get here faster.

19 Weeks and Wiggling

Our heads on others bodies. Defend my watermelon

May 23rd, 2013. 19 weeks and also my monthly appointment today. Nothing too exciting. The highlight was hearing the baby's heartbeat. Heart rate was 142.

We've got a wiggler. I feel it now. I'm sure of it. I have felt something for about 2 weeks, but I thought I could pass it off as my imagination. This I cannot. That baby is wiggling. Only one more week until we get to see my insides again and see what that baby is doing in there.

"Is it a boy or a lady, I don't know which?"
Besides the raging heartburn, this is a very exciting time. Nearing 20 weeks, the half way point to delivery and learning more about our baby everyday. I've definitely had a growth spurt in the last few weeks and I'm officially feeling pregnant. I kept telling myself that I don't look pregnant because I'm already so big. This morning while I was looking in the mirror I realized I can't lie to myself any longer. I do look like a woman, and I do look pregnant. Accept it and enjoy it!

Last night, I lay down and put my husbands hand on my stomach. I told Paul the baby was moving around a lot. First he said he could feel my heart beat in my stomach. Yup, that's the amazing new organ I just built, my placenta. It brings blood, oxygen and nutrients to our baby. Pretty sweet. Then he said "whoa, was that it!?", right after I felt a bit of movement. "YES!"

Paul said it felt like knocking. Maybe our baby already has a hilarious sense of humor like their very own parents and was performing their first knock-knock joke.

Baby: Knock knock
Us: Who's there?
Baby: Fetus
Us: Fetus who?
Baby: Fetus says were you raised in a barn? Close your legs, there's a draft in here and I'm cold!

Oh baby, you ARE hilarious. 

Revisiting the First Trimester: Stop Worrying!

May 23rd. 2013. I am 19 weeks today.
I found this in my drafts, looks like an old post slipped by me and never got published. Rereading this is pretty cool. About 12 weeks have gone by and so much has changed. I am no longer scared of being pregnant. I am not usually nauseous. I am not nearly as tired all the time. The worrying I was doing in the beginning was normal I think. I'm glad I've found a way to curb that worry. It all started with the first doctors visit when everything went well. The biggest part was the ultrasound, it was total confirmation that I was indeed pregnant, no mistaking. Now I'm feeling pretty normal and soon enough we will know the baby's gender, Paul with feel the kicking and it will seem even more solid. Then I will be tired again and huge and anxiously awaiting the arrival of our baby. Take a look at this old post:

Today is March 4th, 2013. I am 7 weeks pregnant. Seven weeks and five days to be exact, and I will be exact. I am counting the days. How does time, which always seems to go by so fast, suddenly seem to be dragging on. I'm anxious for so many things. I for one, and more than anything else, am anxious for my first doctors appointment. Almost more than that I am eager for the first trimester to be over. I am very aware about studies and statistics that say over whatever percent of miscarriages occur in the first trimester. Your chance of miscarriage decreases by blank percent in the second trimester. Chemical pregnancy, false positive, tubal pregnancy, not genetically viable. blah. blah. blah. I know, I know. Worrying doesn't help anything! Actually, worrying or even just being educated on the subject of miscarriage in the first trimester can't do anything to prevent it. Nothing at all, well besides the obvious don't drink, don't smoke kind of stuff. Also, you should probably stop huffing chrome paint under a bridge, that might help too.

I've done everything I'm supposed to do. Above and beyond. I've even been taking prenatal vitamins for three months before we conceived. I've been eating fruits and veggies, even though I want to gag the up. I've been drinking a lot of water, even though I have to pee every twenty minutes. I've even been walking 30 minutes a day. So why am I scared something is going to go wrong? I think every woman has her doubts now and then. Every pregnancy is different. All the books agree. Even two pregnancies with the same mom can vary wildly, you can never know what to expect. There really is no normal.

So I read everything I can get my eyeballs on. I suck it in through my peepers and try to digest. I try not to worry, I try to take all the advice as proof that there is no normal, everyone is different therefore I shouldn't take anything I'm experiencing as a bad sign without a doctor saying so. But sometimes I do anyway.

I had a nightmare that I had a miscarriage. I passed a big clot, picked it up and rinsed it off to find a tiny, bean sized gummy bear of a baby skeleton. I held it in my had and cried. I didn't want to get rid of it. I just stood there looking at it in all it's detail. I woke up and tears were streaming down my cheeks. It seemed so real that I started to think about the baby inside me as past tense. I had to shake my head, stop myself and say, HEY you don't know that you had a miscarriage! You need to stay strong and positive until someone tells you that you have a reason to cry.

In reality, I am fine. My boobs still hurt, I still want to ralph, I still am exhausted, lucky me right? Yes. lucky me for sure. Lucky us, my husband and I. We still have to wait, wait, wait for that first doctors appointment. Sixteen and a half days. Over two weeks. That really isn't that long. But so much can happen before then. So much will change. This little tadpole in my underbelly will have already lost it's tail. They are growing so fast. Come on body, come on buddy, come on odds, don't fail me now. One more month and I can worry a little less.

Genderless Child

My first hunting trip, age 3

In my last post I confessed we are pretty excited to find out the gender of our fetus. This brings up a topic that I have thought quite a lot about. A year or two ago I read an article that had caused quite a stir in the news media. It was about one Toronto couple's choice to keep the gender of their new born baby a secret. They decided to raise a genderless child. (Go Canada?)
To read the article I'm referring to, CLICK HERE .

This would entail only 6 people knowing the gender of the new baby. The mother, father, two young siblings and the two midwives that were there for the birth. They would not tell other friends, family members or passersby and they would not be decorating in pink or blue. The idea would be not to force any assumptions on the child and let them decide what colors they like and what toys they want to play with completely on their own without any outside influences.

Could this even work? And if so, what will this accomplish? Wouldn't it be better to let the child know the name of their genitals and still have freedom to decide what they like and dislike? Wouldn't it be good to let the child understand that our society has stereotypes. Stereotypes for different races, classes and genders and that even though there are stereotypes there are many exceptions? What happened to the age old saying "You can be anything you want to be."? Why withhold information from the child about his/her own body? Children will usually figure out what they like regardless of what you try to put in front of them.

Age 4, working on the car with Dad

There were times when I was a child that I thought I had been ripped off. I was sure I was a boy and everyone else was wrong. I remember looking in the mirror at my dirt smeared face and short bowl cut hairdo. I thought about how I liked hanging out with dad and working on cars. I liked going fishing and I didn't mind gutting those fish and ripping out their insides, I actually liked the slimy cold feeling. No one in my family ever told me I couldn't do that. They never told me to wash my face and put on a dress. (Well, sometimes I had to wash my face, but you get what I mean.) They encouraged my interest in cars and the outdoors, and they didn't discourage it if the next day I wanted to play house or dress up a doll. Regardless of my preference in play, they also told me I was, in fact, a girl. I had a pee-she and boys have a tallywacker. Sorry. These are the cards I was dealt. That is how I was born. These are just my reproductive organs, and those shouldn't even matter to a child besides learning if it's easier to sit down or stand up to pee. You can do anything you want to. You can be anything you want to be. Most importantly, you should just be a kid and try on as many hats as you want.

When I say I am interested in knowing my child's gender, it is not because I want to fit them into a stereotype of what a male or female should be. It is just that, a gender. I am not strict or religious. I do not believe the woman should necessarily stay home raising kids in the kitchen in a long dress. I also don't believe that the man should have to... I don't know, whatever men do. Bread winner, macho so and so. Everyone is different. What I do want to work for is a child who is happy and comfortable with themselves. Someone who knows, understands and accepts that people are always changing. Someone who is okay with learning and expanding their minds by trying different things, finding what they like and not pigeonholing themselves. When we decide our path at a young age, if we are not flexible we may miss many cool and interesting opportunity's along the way if they do not fit into our original idea. We should all be open minded enough to let new information change what we have believed before.

You wouldn't ask a 3 year old what they want to be when they grow up and then hold them to that decision for life. If that was the case I would be a city bus driver, because I was pretty sure the driver got to keep all that change in the front of the bus. At ten cents a passenger (in 1987) any kid knows, that's a shitload of money.

I've also recently read a story about a couple that adopted a child, only after realizing that child was born with both sex organs and their birth parents and doctor made the decision to keep the girlie parts and chop off the boy parts. As the child developed everyone realized they had more male characteristics than female. Choosing a gender at birth would not be my choice if I would have to decide. I understand that everyone just wanted that baby to live a normal life and be a normal baby, but that baby was not normal. They are unique. They were born with two sets of genitals, that is unusual. To then decide the sex of your child is setting yourself up for future disappointment. What if the girl you chose ends up clearly being more male when they develop? Or what if that boy you chose grows breasts? It that normal now? No. Why not leave them different downstairs as God or whoever intended and let that child decide when they are old enough to know what they want for themselves? Every pubescent human feels awkward. That is part of the human experience.

So much to think about. Anybody reading this? Anybody have any thoughts? Leave a comment!

Show Me Your Genitals

I am now 18 weeks pregnant. It's going by faster than I thought it would. At first, I was counting every second, then everyday. Then it went to every week. Now a few weeks will go by and then I'll think about it and say, wow, time IS moving after all. The countdown's are many. Third trimester start date, when will I really feel the baby kick? Due date etc. The one I am currently most excited about is the countdown to our next ultrasound. This ultrasound will be different than the last. Our little jelly bean has grown so much. It will be 9 weeks since our first ultrasound and a lot has happened in those 9 weeks.

The whole goal of this visit is for one seemingly odd reason. We're trying to get a clear picture of the baby's junk. Their downstairs. Their basement. All eyes on the wee-wee or the pee-she. That's right, we're all trying to take a peek at our baby's genitals.

Apparently taking naked photos of your own children isn't okay anymore. I know I have a baby photo of myself in the bath tub in my baby book. Adorable. But now it's only okay if that baby is still a fetus and is still inside you and the photo is in black and white. I'll take it. I want to know. I want to see that babies junk. I hope this little thing isn't as modest and camera shy as I am. I hope they'll roll over to the camera and spread eagle. I want to know! Is it a boy or a girl?

I ask myself often why I want to know. Why? I don't have any control over the decision, it has already been made. I want a healthy baby, I don't really care what gender it is. So if I don't have any say in it and it's already determined and I don't care, then why do I want to know? I think it's mostly because I want to picture what my future is like. Not that I will be painting a nursery pink or blue depending on the results of our next ultrasound. Not that I will expect my child to like only Barbies or Tonka Trucks. Only so this may seem more real. I have a small person growing inside me. Who are they? Who is he? Who is she?

I want to start picking a name and imagine them as a person with an identity. It is becoming more real all the time, but it is still kind of surreal actually. Again, there is a fricken human being growing inside of me!! Learning the gender of our child is just one more piece of this mysterious puzzle. The rest will have to wait until they arrive.

Weird Dreams

Baby's first gift. Handmade booties from Paul's Grandma Cathy

My uterus is a fish bowl with a lid on it that is totally full of water. I can feel my little goldfish swimming around. Although the fishy is not exactly strong enough for me to feel it when he hits the sides, I know he's there because of the waves he's creating.

So far I've had lots of dreams about being pregnant but none about the baby, until last night. The dreams of being pregnant usually include me hanging out with old friends that I never see anymore, some of them have even died years ago. We're doing whatever we would have been doing in my younger days. Sitting around, listening to music, drinking beer. I'm always about half way into a beer when I realize that, hey, I'm pregnant! I'm not supposed to be drinking this! It seems no one else is concerned and they don't seem to believe that I'm pregnant.

I had a dream that I had the baby. I didn't remember giving birth but I left for work from the hospital just after. I knew I had to head home soon because of the baby. My dad was supposed to bring the little one home for me. I had to bum a ride home because I didn't drive to work due to just giving birth. (funny how in dreamland I knew I shouldn't drive but didn't know I shouldn't go to work the same day I gave birth, go figure?) When I got home I found my dad in bed with the little one all bundled up next to him. It was a boy. I peeked in and took a look at his tiny little face. His upper lip was covered in long, wispy silky hair. It was reddish-brown hair, just like his daddy's beard. I remember wondering and trying to decide if I thought he was cute or not, I wasn't sure. I picked him up realizing that I hadn't ever fed him and I'd been at work all day. I took him into another room to breastfeed. He latched on quickly and was a messy eater. There was milk in his mustache and it tickled to feed him. It was like having a little bass fish attached to my nipple. But with all that weirdness I just described, it somehow didn't feel unnatural at all.

It's a surreal thing to think about how I will have everything I need to keep that baby alive within my body. Both now while as a fetus inside the womb, and when it's a baby after birth. My boobs are all the food and water they'll need for a long time. The purpose of my breasts were always a mystery to me. They always seemed to get in the way as a tomboy growing up. As they grew, they were more annoying. Now they give me trouble when I get dressed for work and look in the mirror. Everything looks good, but then there's that cleavage! Ugh. No. That is why I have scarves. It's like wearing a boob blanket without looking like a weirdo, except on really hot days, then I still look like a weirdo. Maybe becoming a mother and using these ta-ta's for what they were made for will make me less self conscious and more accepting of my womanly curves? We shall see.