The Gender

5.9.14

     Alex had asked that he know the gender of baby #2 and be able to surprise me with it that week. I told him that was okay, but he was on a time limit of 48 hours (because it is a very strange feeling to have people other than yourself know the gender of the baby you're carrying). Well, he didn't exactly last that long.
      We were sitting on the couch when he let it slip. I can't even remember exactly what we were talking about, but the next thing I know he says, "Well when (he/she) gets here, we'll have to do..."
       My head jerked up from whatever I was reading and I said, "Did you just say (he/she)?!"
       He gave a huge sigh and disappeared into the garage. A few minutes later, he came back with the envelope that Dr. Z had sealed with our baby gender picture inside. I opened it, and there on the post it covering the sonogram picture confirmed what he had just said.

       To be honest, I didn't care either way. I just want a screaming child in that operating room. With Kaitlyn, I use to tell everyone that I wanted a very "boring birth" with "nothing exciting." Strange how those words came true in a very morbid way. There wasn't any excitement with her. There was quiet. Silence as she was lifted from my stomach and carried over to the warming table. No screaming, no gasps of air as she found her way into the world.
        Silence.

        So this time, I want excitement. I want this kiddo to take a full breath of air and scream until everyone's ears bleed. Because that means that he/she is alive. It means that I will get to feel his/her chest move as those screams come out of his/her mouth. It means that I will get to sleep with one hand on his/her back and feel the rhythmic movement of breath and sleep.
         I'm ready. Past ready.

        After we gushed for a few minutes over the confirmation of our baby's gender, we talked about if we were going to tell people. For starters, if you haven't figured this out by now, I am a numbers girl and I like data and statistics. We were told when we first went into Dr. Z's office that there was only an 85% chance that the gender they predicted that day would be the correct gender. Now for me, that means that 15% is a fairly big chance of them being wrong. To Alex, it might as well have been 99% accurate. Plus, he said that Dr. Z was very confident when she mouthed to him across me which way the baby was showing. But even at much later stages of pregnancy sonograms have been wrong. In fact, my cousin was first told that she was having a girl and the day before her gender reveal she went back in for a confirmation sonogram and they switched it to a boy. And along came Sir William.
        Another concern I had with telling people so early is that people are going to want to bring us gifts. It all comes from a very nice and caring place, but I just don't want any gifts. Seeing all the things that people had bought for Kaitlyn that would never be used really hurt after we lost her. It was almost like a wedding that never gets to the altar: do I have to send these gifts back? People were still sending gifts all the way up to our delivery date, so I was still writing thank you notes for gifts at the same time I was writing acknowledgement cards for flowers and plants from the memorial service. I didn't want to have to do that again. Plus, the majority of the stuff we registered for with Kaitlyn was gender neutral anyways.

         So I told Alex I thought we should wait until we had another sonogram to confirm the gender. He wasn't super happy, but he understood and respected where I was coming from.
         For now, Alex and I (and the sonographer and Dr. Z) are the only people in this world that know our baby's gender.