Everyone loves to be an expert, especially when it comes to figuring out exactly how chromosomes will align and DNA will materialize in your burdgeoning belly. By two days after you've announced your pregnancy, you expect to hear two questions from every single human being you encounter:
1. How are you feeling?
2. Do you know what you are having yet? (Or, if it's really early, Are you going to find out?)
It is that second question which I am referring to in this post. One of my close friends loves to answer people for me on this one. She always says, "Oh, she's having a baby." Actually, I think I should tell her to get more sarcastic. Start saying things like I'm having a goldfish. Or a terrorist love child.
When confronted with this question, you'll have a long time of answering, "Oh, we don't know yet, not for another (insert epoch era amount of time here)." Most people do not get a chance to find out the sex of their baby until at least 20 weeks along, when you go for that mid-pregnancy ultrasound. You know, the one that you envisioned the minute you knew that the sperm finally hit the egg just right...and that has felt like it'll never get here? That's when you have the opportunity to know. But people begin asking you this godforsaken question when you're at about, oh, week 12, and you're having a particularly pudgy, bloated day. So prep the fake smile and start suppressing those sighs, because you've got a lot of 'splainin to do.
Invariably, when you're forced to answer folk that you don't know what you're having, they'll want to know if you intend to find out, and when you can find out. Now, pre-pregnancy, and even pre-everyone-knowing-about-the-pregnancy, I entertained the notion of being surprised, of not finding out if it is a boy or girl until after that movie-worthy cry of clear lungs when popping out from between my splayed legs. Then I got pregnant and everyone found out. And ev-er-y-one began asking me and offering their very valuable, very interesting opinions on the matter.
I'm definitely finding out (and I've got only about one more week to endure the absence of an answer!) so that I can shut people up quicker. If they ask me what I'm having and I can simply say, "A boy" or "a girl," I'm taking a certain kind of wind out of their sails, because the conversation no longer leads to the hidden joys of keeping it a surprise, since a surprise it is not.
The other, and more important, thing it eliminates is people's opportunity to GUESS what you are having. When they know you don't know, then ooooh, mama, they will be sure to TELL you, silly fool. I'm pretty dead even when it comes to everyone's theories on me. I'm an equal gender opportunity pregnant lady.
I had a friend tell me she thinks I'm having a girl because I didn't have much sickness and I've just been tired. My husband had a coworker tell him I must be having a boy because I wasn't very sick and I was tired a lot.
My grandmother says I'm having a girl because I've gained most of my weight in just my stomach so far, and none in my ass. (Little does she know, since she ain't the one chafing through denim.) Two weeks after my grandmother delivered this revelation, my mom told me that, for the exact same reasons, she thought I was having a boy.
And those aren't even the people you mind hearing from. You expect your friends and family to participate in theorizing because, well, there IS a small level of fun in it. It's the strangers that poke you and prod you and offer this intimate wisdom of how your body works even though you've only ever talked to them long enough to exchange hellos a handful of times. Or haven't seen them since you graduated high school. Or only know them through a friend of your cousin. And so on and so on.
So my suggestion? Play the guessing game to give the people what they want, as always, which is a happy, glowing, twinkle-eyed Good Pregnant Woman. But, for the love of your sanity, FIND OUT IF WHAT'S LIVING INSIDE YOUR STOMACH HAS A PENIS OR A VAGINA. Because getting to shut people up even just a little bit more is the best reason I've found yet.
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