We’ll Cross Our Fingers for a Boy!!

People I meet often figure out that I am expecting.  Sometimes they guess by the belly, sometimes it’s my pea-green complexion curtesy of my old friend, morning sickness, and sometimes it just comes up in conversation somehow.

After the kind congratulatory remarks, the questions begin:  When are you due?  How are you feeling?  Is this your first?  Do you know if you are having a boy or a girl?

I know some women get irritated by the questions of strangers and barely contain their tempers while trying to find a nice way of saying, “none of your business,” but I am not one of them.  I spend the majority of my days with two busy girlies and a husband who is working forty hours a week and taking two classes toward his master’s degree.  Quite frankly, I’m thrilled when someone takes the time to ask me a question other than, “What’s for dinner?”

What I do find a bit alarming is that after these strangers find out I have two daughters, they almost invariably say some form of “We’ll cross our fingers for you that this one’s a boy!”

This never fails to stump me.  Because I know girls.  I know how to change their diapers and which brands of leggings are least likely to get holes in them.  I know the names and cutie marks of all the main my little ponies and how to get those rubber polly pocket dresses on the little plastic plastic princesses without ripping them.  I learned to french braid and to make lady bug and ice cream charms using nothing but a rainbow loom and rubber bands.  I can put tights on a two year old, for pete’s sake.  I love little girls, and I’d be thrilled to have one more.

It’s not that I’m opposed to having a boy.  I have a lot of friends with sons, and their kids are great.  They can be just as kind, compassionate and funny as their female counterparts.  And I’ve heard boys can be just as messy, wild, and stubborn too.

The only thing that makes me a tad nervous is the way that Chris laughs and says, “I just want to see you try to raise a boy, heh heh heh,” and his mother’s advice nine years ago “to watch your good pans—boys will take them and use them to change the oil in their cars.”

But the point is that we are not hoping for a girl or a boy, just a healthy baby.  Because the sex doesn’t matter.  Newborns are terrifying regardless of gender.  They are red and wrinkled and they can’t hold their own relatively large heads up.  You have to teach them to eat and sleep and keep them warm, but not too warm.  You have to count their wet diapers and figure out why they are crying and how to make them stop.  You get to hold them and snuggle them and tell them that they will grow up to be kind, considerate, and loved.  And that’s really quite enough to be getting on with.

So terrifying.

So terrifying too.

We have our twenty week ultrasound on Wednesday, and as long as baby cooperates, we’ll get to find out if we are expecting a boy or a girl.  But please, don’t cross your fingers that it’s a boy (or a girl).  Just cross your fingers that it’s healthy.  And that it will sleep through the night at a very early age.  And perhaps that it gets Chris’ hand-eye coordination.



Let me know your guesses!
My Guess:  Girl
Allison:  Boy
Nicole:  Girl