Baby's sex

Last night, as usual on a lazy Sunday evening, Felipe and I were lounging about in our living area. I was in one of my less hormonal moods, moving between cooking dinner and watching something on Netflix, when he asked me something -- a question I won't quote, since I'm not sure exactly how it was worded -- about whether I thought I'd start crying when the baby was delivered. After making a comment about how I'd be crying for joy once the agony of labor had ended, I realized that I hadn't really put much thought into how I'd feel in that moment at all, other than ripped apart and bloody and regretting intensely my decision to refuse pain medicine from those kind souls who'd so generously offered it. I'd thought about how badly I want my baby to successfully latch, to begin the bond of breastfeeding between mother and child that I've spent the last months reading about and praying for success in. But that moment, the one in which baby separates forever from my womb and becomes its own, semi-independent person, with a social security number and an overwhelming weight of societal expectations placed upon on his or her shoulders? I guess it hadn't really occurred to me what I would feel, but in the back of my mind, I was pretty sure I wouldn't cry. Maybe it's Fergie's fault, with her insistence that big girls don't cry, but I have viewed my own tears as a source of shame for quite some time now, even to the point of masking them with excuses: allergies, spicy foods, or anything at all besides emotions. Which isn't what I want my children to believe, regardless of their sex, and suddenly, I was spiraling hard into a pit of worry that this all could only mean one thing. I'm a bad mother.

So this morning, as I was laying miserably on our sofa after throwing up multiple attempts at breakfast (forget what I say about nausea ending; I don't believe it ever does), I had forgotten all about the event aforementioned. I picked up my phone to see what was new in the pregnancy apps. Lo and behold, there was a post that said, simply,

"gender at birth?
Anyone else waiting tell birth to get the gender"

Despite the poster's lack of punctuation, I was intrigued. I clicked on the subject line and began reading the responses of women who have made the decision to wait for their babies to announce their sex. (And no, I don't agree that 'gender' and 'sex' are synonyms, but I understand that a lot of people do use them interchangeably.) Maybe it was because of my empty stomach, or my hormonal daze, but I suddenly saw so clearly that this is what I've been missing out on. Ever since we found out we were expecting, we've been talking and receiving questions about finding out baby's sex and when we will be able to do so. I read somewhere that over 80% of parents choose to find out via ultrasound, not birth, though I'm not sure how accurate that statistic is, since many people obviously don't have the option for a pre-labor sex scan.

You got it: we have decided to wait until birth to find out this baby's sex. I know not everyone feels the same way, but here is a list of reasons I have for this decision:

1. I cried, quite pathetically, when I imagined that final push and hearing my husband's voice announcing to me whether we have a son or a daughter. And I imagine I'll cry, quite happily, when it's really happening.
2. Labor is extremely scary for me, but when I imagine the outcome as not just holding our precious miracle for the first time, but also knowing that such exciting news will be waiting for us, I feel a whole lot less afraid and way more determined.
3. Regardless of this baby's sex, we probably want to have more children in the future, and buying an array of things that are designed for that specific "kind" of baby would be tempting if we found out pre-labor. This way, we'll have lots of unisex items that can be recycled for the future.
4. There are a lot of gender expectations that we wouldn't want our children to be subjected to while they're still trying to develop into fully-formed human beings, and can't even cry audibly to express their disagreement.