Toeing the Gender Line

I had just helped a coworker find her online email so that she could find an order which was placed before Christmas and never arrived (not exactly a work-related question) and was about to leave my office to check up on some real work that was going on, when she asked me: "So, do you know what you're having?"

"Yes," I replied, with a smile, "We're having a baby."

When I came back into the office a little later, my male office mate, who has been present at many of these inane conversations, was still laughing.

When I ask people why they need to know the gender of my impending child, they tell me it is because it makes it much easier to buy something for the kid. Even after several explanations, I fail to understand why. A stuffed teddy bear is a stuffed teddy bear. A bottle is a bottle. As for clothes, I myself do not recall what I was wearing much before the age of two, and at the age of two I recall being so uninterested in the idea of wearing clothes that I spent most of my time trying to get out of them. (This was the era of Super Me, who leaped over tall leggos in nothing but a towel tied around the neck. Super Me could get out of her street clothes and into her superhero costume in 5 seconds flat.)

One person tried to entice the gender out of me by painting a tantalizing story of a woman who, by virtue of knowing the gender of her child, was able to decorate the nursery in an "airplane" theme, with the logo of an airline stenciled on the wall, and elements of flying scattered about the room. I will leave it to the gentle reader to determine which gender was entitled to this sort of design concept, but my immediate thought was: a bedroom full of airplanes! I would have loved that!!

At some point we will no longer be able to keep Stanley's gender a secret (although, I suppose if we named him/her Pat and dressed him/her in yellow all the time, the secret could be prolonged for an indefinite period of time), and at that point I can imagine gender related presents being steered towards Stanley's perceived best interests; train pajamas if Stanley is a boy, Cinderella pajamas if Stanley is a girl. But I hope Stanley can determine his/her own interests without outside interference. If Stanley my son wants to be a ballerina when he grows up, then ballerina he shall play. If Stanley my daughter wants to be a car mechanic when she's older, I'll get her to change the oil on my car. If Stanley my child wants to be things which fall within the artificial gender divide, that's okay too.

Don't know what to buy for Stanley before Stanley meets the world? Buy Stanley something you'd have liked as a baby. Stanley will like these things too. Stanley will like everything that goes on-- it'll be so much more interesting than where s/he is now.

Cleave Land

I was, after all, prepared to gain amusingly large amounts of weight. I was prepared to suddenly be unable to see my toes, and to look in the mirror in profile and wonder whose soccer ball I had accidentally swallowed. I was prepared for a lot of things, even, in a vague way, larger breasts; but I was not prepared for cleavage.

I've always been happily small breasted, meaning that not only was I small in the chest, but I was proud of this fact. Breasts are nice in that they define the female body, but large ones make one look top heavy and ditzy, and furthermore are like overlong hair; in the way of almost every thing. I've always liked the size mine got to be. Enough to prove to everyone that I am female. But not big enough to need major structural support 24-7.

Until now. I've outgrown almost all of my upper body underwear. My shirts are straining not only at the belly but at the chest as well. And yesterday I happened to look down at myself wearing a fairly low-cut shirt and noticed for the first time that I have grown cleavage.

"Holy Shit!" I yelled out. "Shit! Shit!" This was enough cursing for my husband to come running into the bedroom, where I was staring at myself in the mirror.

"What's wrong?" he asked, concerned.

"I have....cleavage," I gasped, holding the last word out like a dirty diaper. My husband's concerned look collapsed into a relieved smile.

"It's okay," he said, "It's only temporary."

Any man who can confidently reassure his wife that her cleavage is temporary is definitely someone worth keeping. God, I love this man.

Stereotypes and Kilroy

A coworker asked me, with a downright gleam in her eye, whether I was "finally" getting tired.

"No," I said. I have been having some trouble sleeping but I'm not going to divulge these personal details just to satisfy that hungry gleam. In any event, all in all I feel just as perky as I always have, restless even, now that I've been grounded from certain activities such as racquetball or soccer. The gleam disappeared and the woman actually said, "dang."

This hunger of my fellow female acquaintances to share in what they feel should be my discomfort is disconcerting. A woman who works downstairs and fancies herself in charge of parking took it upon herself to insist to the new HR person that one parking space is "always" reserved for people who are pregnant. "The last girl who was pregnant," she told the straight faced HR woman, "was so huge she could barely get out of her car." The HR person couldn't help smiling as she offered me the space; she knew I would turn it down. If I didn't play the Disability Card when I was one leg short of a working pair after ACL surgery while still in college, hobbling around like a madwoman from class to class across a 135-acre campus, there's no way I am going to play it when I have two perfectly good legs and a sudden aching desire to play tackle football. Talk about weird cravings.

I did however have the common experience recently of dreaming that we had the kid. Stanley was fine, although pretty old to be a newborn, and the main thrust of the dream was that I had completely blanked out the whole process of giving birth, which, on the one hand, was just fine with me, but on the other hand was disturbing, because apparently I had been awake and aware during the process and Stanley somehow ended up with the name Kilroy. "Kilroy?" I kept asking my husband, "Why Kilroy?" "I don't know," he replied in the dream, "You kept insisting that it had to be Kilroy, so that's what I did."

Stanley Kilroy Hilarius. At least the name is anything but stereotypical.

Limited Time Offer! Get Your Doula Now!

Our last prenatal appointment, which was ostensibly to check my weight, blood pressure, urine, and make sure that Stanley is still in there, was supposed to last 15 minutes. But the woman who came in to greet us was a midwife, and she was clearly drugged to the teeth with thoughts of Baby. "Glorious!" was one of the first things she said, outside of introducing herself to me and to my husband (the first time he has actually been acknowledged without prompting--admittedly a point in her favor). The dialogue went downhill from there.
"Fantastic!"
"Isn't it wondrous?"
"Oh joy!" were all interjected into the conversation, which she carried on mostly by herself, needing only small amounts of prompting ("No problems, just a small problem sleeping, but I hear that's norm-") to tell me all about breathing techniques and homeopathy and how badly she slept when she was pregnant and whatever else came to mind before she ran out of air and had to breathe in more. Both my husband and I were now late for work, and so I tried to shorten my answers to monosyllabic yeses and nos, until finally, 45 minutes later, we were let go.
Please god, shoot me now.

That was a few days ago. Since then it's been mostly quiet on the baby front, to my infinite relief, but today a woman sauntered into my office on another pretense and asked that tired old question: When are you due? Distracted, I told her, which she used as an opening to introduce herself as a doula, and did I know about the doula program and here was all this information about doulas, and she would be happy to answer any questions I had about the doula program-
Please, please go away now.

But wait! There's more to giving birth than just midwives and doulas, not to mention registered nurses, doctors and... oh yeah, the woman actually giving birth... in case you were worried if you were going to be able to keep it all straight in your mind, we've introduced...

wait for it...

wait for it....

the prenatal coordinator.

We get to see the prenatal coordinator next month, where she will most likely ask us if we've given any thought to a birth plan.
Yes, I expect I'll say. I plan to give birth.