It's A....

Shoulderstand Baby!

Monday, April 30th, was one of the most profound days of my life. That is why I couldn't blog about it until today.

For weeks now, I've felt certain that the life inside me was a little girl, a mini-me, a feminist babe waiting to be born. I spent hours trolling through baby name websites, searching Italian, French, Latin, Celtic, Aramaic, Hebrew, whatever names for girls. Francesca? Bella? Naomi? Edie? What would it be? The nurse who read the doppler when she heard our baby's heart beating at 158 bpm said, knowingly, "It's a girl." My acupuncturist, disclaiming that she is always wrong, said with a frown, "I could be wrong, and I usually am, but I think it's a girl." Because it took so long to conceive, and we perceived it as being difficult, we assumed that only the stronger fishy could swim all the way up to the waiting egg, which meant a girl.

And then Monday, on the ultrasound table at the clinic, the young nurse who sometimes goes to Yoga Yoga gave us a guided tour of the fetus's anatomy, asking us if we wanted to know the gender.

We had discussed this.

Wise sages in hippie pregnancy books advised, "There are so few surprises left in life...let it be a mystery!" Glib chick-lit-like authors took it for granted that you'd want to know your baby's sex. That strange species of woman who would want to decorate and color-coordinate a nursery would naturally insist on learning the baby's gender. Knowing, humorous pregnancy tomes say that everyone will be asking you this question as soon as you start showing. Friends who are unbelievably cool kept their baby's gender secret from the rest of the world until delivery. We talked it over. And here at compulsiveselfdisclosure.com the only answer was "Yes, of course we want to know the sex of our baby." And then "Yes, of course we want to tell everyone in the universe."

So when the nurse said "It's a boy." I burst into soft, wet tears. Tears of joy. Now the fetus, "it," could be referred to as "him." Our fetus had a pronoun. A whole host of them, in fact. Andrew got teary. We really just want a healthy baby. Cliched as that always sounds, it is one of the few cliches in American life that really holds true.

But having a boy suddenly changes so much in me. My intense loathing of the patriarchy suddenly softens. Wow, I might even be able to contribute a great man to society! I've always dreamed of the sensitive generation of enlightened men who will someday populate the earth, having been raised by feminist moms. World peace instead of world destruction...equal rights for women without being threatened...an end to rape...respect instead of hatred...true empowerment of all instead of power struggling...


With such a loving, tender-hearted, sensitive yet strong father, our son will have a great male role model. And with such a radically feminist, chick-centric mom, he'll have a great female role model. Those are my hopes, anyway. (I feel doubt in my heart after watching an episode of The Bachelor recently, however.) He could be a little martial artist yogi in waiting. He could be a flaming queen fashion designer, a Rufus Wainwright queer boy. He could be an NBA superstar, a world leader, a sad mechanic, a transformational writer, an entrepeneur. Who knows?

All I know is that I got a boy growing inside me. He's already surprising and delighting me, proving once again, in this process, that I am not the one in control. You read all these articles about today's mom picking and choosing her fertility, pregnancy, and labor and delivery times "for her convenience." I even bought into that for a second. But the truth is, there is no such thing as "designer pregnancies." Even if you have in-vitro fertilization, take all the right fertility drugs, schedule your delivery and c-section, plan your meetings and vacations, the baby comes when it's ready.

And I like it.