Jenny’s post regarding her baby’s gender got me thinking about her obsession with finding out if both her kids were boys or girls… as well as her behavior during my pregnancies.
She linked to her letter to me when I was pregnant with Sam, beseeching me to call the ultrasound tech and say I’d changed my mind and did in fact want to find out the baby’s sex, but really her annoyance with me goes back much further in time than that.
It started approximately 1 second after I announced my first pregnancy to her. (Which was about 1 second after I announced my first pregnancy to my husband, but he thinks we kept it a secret until I went to the doctor, so don’t tell him that.)
So I started to think about all the ways she gave me a hard time about not knowing what type of baby I was having, and with the help of some old emails I never got around to deleting (yay for Yahoo allowing me to have 34,000 completely useless emails saved), I’ve compiled a list.
— Jenny lovingly called Kate “Hermie” for the entire nine months of my pregnancy – short for “Hermaphrodite.”
— She made a list of gender-neutral names we could give the baby (like Pat and Kerry)… I guess she thought the baby’s sex wouldn’t be determinable even after she was born. (Which now that I think about it, was one of the 9 million things I worried about. I’m sure that comes as no surprise.)
— At my baby shower, all the guests made scrapbook pages about memories of me, etc. Jenny filled the entire page with a snarky diatribe about how messed up it was that we didn’t know what brand of baby we were having!
— She threatened not to buy baby #2 any presents, because she refused to buy anything gender-neutral. I distinctly remember her calling me from the mall one day, telling me what a great sale she found but that she wouldn’t buy me anything for the baby because she didn’t know whether to buy pink or blue!
— After my ultrasound, she said she was going to call our doctor’s office and pretend to be me, saying I’d changed my mind and did want to know what the baby was. Really I wouldn’t put it past her.
— Upon hearing the news that Sammy was breech and I was going to have to have another ultrasound at 37 weeks, Jenny’s immediate response was not one of concern, but “Find out the sex!”
— During the winter I was pregnant with Sam, Jenny contemplated hibernating for a host of reasons, including this: “I won’t have to spend the winter months wondering what the HELL the sex of said baby is either, which will be a relief.”
— The day before Sammy was born, Jenny posted this: “Emily is going to thrill us by having another baby!! And more importantly, once it is born she will no longer be able to hide the gender from me! Hallelujah! The suspense is really killing me on that one.”
I really never had the desire to find out whether I was having a boy or a girl, but even if it had been killing me, causing Jenny such angst would really have been worth the wait.
And while I’ll be waiting with bated breath to find out the results of Jenny’s ultrasound this summer, I think it would be poetic justice if they saw all the baby’s organs except, you know, that one.
We never knew. Never cared. Never wanted to know. Just happy to have them both! Jenny just loves to shop! Seriously, it’s all about the mall!
UP
I know it’s not the point of your post AT ALL, but can I just tell you how happy it makes me that you have bated breath (and not the dreaded baited breath)?
Anyway. I didn’t want to know (much to the surprise of everyone who knows me, because I am a planner and a control freak), but my husband did. So I said, FINE. And then? Then my sweet little baby picked ME as her favorite because she hid her PARTS from us during the ultrasound. Aha! Sweet justice.
And besides, she looked really good in green. A lot of green.
You are a crazy person!!! CRAZY!! Why would you not want to know?? WHY?????
I’m with Jenny…I have to know! And to see all the organs except that telling one…oh-so cruel! That’s what happened with my first…and it sucked. I was sure the bun in the oven was a boy…so I bought all boy things. About a month before I was due, it hit me, little BITO could be a girl. So then I went out and bought a girl wardrobe. I made myself (and everyone around me) crazy until BITO was out and it was a boy.
Either way, it’s a baby…Yay! But I still want to know what kind. 🙂
I found out with my first, but not with my second. And actually… I kinda loved not knowing. Not at first, at first it drove me CRAZY. But, in the end I’m really glad I didn’t know. Weird, but true.
this is hilarious. great collection making Jenny look crazy (even though I’m in her camp on this).
We didn’t find out with Josie, although I swore it was going to be a girl the moment I peed on the stick! But we did have a lot of greens and yellows which was fine with me because I realllly don’t like the color pink! Once she was home it looked like someone puked pink all over my living room!! I am glad we didn’t know!!
Love this post Emily. When I have kids I don’t want to know, but I will definitely be waiting to hear about Jenny’s baby and my brother’s girlfriend finds out the sex of her kid in a few weeks, can’t wait for that either.
It would be pretty funny if the baby didn’t cooperate during the ultrasound. Jenny might go crazy, but it would make for great blogging! 🙂
I’m with Jenny on this one! I HAD to know with both pregnancies and was prepared to pay for an extra ultrasound if the little brat wouldn’t show us the goods 🙂 (just joking – about the “brat” not the extra ultrasound). I can’t wait to find out what Jenny is having. Because I love to shop too! That gives me an extra reason to shop at the Gap, right? Because you know the Gap doesn’t have gender neutral items….
How can anyone read this post and NOT understand how relentlessly fun it was to mess with Jenny when she was a child? All of you would have done it too!
Halarious post! We didn’t find out with either of ours…didn’t want to for the first, weren’t able to for the 2nd. For those who have waited the 9 months to find out the gender- it is one of life’s great surprises. But, whenever you find out…at 20 weeks or 40, it is a wonderful surprise and blessing! Ironically, it is harder for me to wait to find out the gender of my friends’ babies than my own.