The bitter taste of it

Jump to Comments

Before yesterday I thought I didn’t have a strong wish for this fetus to be one gender or the other. I had all kinds of pros and cons for either a boy or a girl. But when the ultrasound tech told us the baby is a boy, I had a very strong wave of emotion. I couldn’t identify it in the moment, but it was disappointment. I wasn’t surprised that it was a boy–in fact, I would have been surprised if I were told it were a girl–because I feel like lately I’ve resigned myself to disappointment. I expect it. It feels like a way of life. In fact, I’m in a frame of mind with this pregnancy so far from Pitter’s that it rattles me a bit when I examine it: I kind of don’t care what kind of labor and birth I have: induction? epidural? c-section? Whatever. I kind of don’t care if we supplement breast feeding with formula. Oh, and I had very strong wishes about these things with Pitter. Because, of course, I was in control of my life back then. Or some semblance of control, anyway.

But now, I kind of don’t care about anything anymore, because if I allow all of my opinions and disappointments to bubble up to to the surface they will incapacitate me. I guess even with all of these therapy appointments and pregnancy hormones, depression is still with me.

And so, with apologies and no apologies, here is the most inappropriate list of pros and cons to this second child being a boy. Because how can a human life have pros and cons? How can an individual’s existence be whittled down to something so simplistic and insulting?

Pros on having a second boy

• Pitter will have a brother–a sibling of the same gender for an intimate relationship (as complicated as that is) that I was never granted, having only brothers myself.
• Sweet Cheeks, having had no sisters, may be more comfortable fathering sons, and will have an intimacy with his boys that he has enjoyed with his own brothers.
• If Patter is as sweet to me as Pitter has been, and gender has anything to do with it, I will be showered in attention, love, and kisses for years to come.
• I will be the first female role model two men of the world will know, and therefore will have the opprotunity to influence strong, feminist leanings in their sense of justice and behavior towards women and men.
• I will not need to worry as much about my own body and eating issues around boys because although they will absorb the messages I give them about the female body, they are not as likely to model their own behavior from mine.
• Generally, I may not feel as guilty/neurotic about my own sense of failure as a woman and the choices I’ve made because again, boys will not be modeling as closely as a girl might.
• No need to buy any new baby clothes.
• No weddings to pay for. (Ha! Just kidding. It ticks me off SO much that this tradition is still alive and I will insist on splitting any such costs 50/50 if appropriate.)

 

Cons on having a second boy

• Pitter will not benefit from the intimacy that comes from growing up with a sister. His ability to sympathize with girls and understand the complications of their existence in the world will be impacted by lack of that female relationship.
• I, having had no sisters, will certainly continue to feel cut off from the intimacy that such a sibling would have provided. Yes, I have had and have close female friends, but my shaky sense of potential-rejection and loneliness will remain until the day I die. I realize that having a daughter with the expectation that she will eventually become a best friend is highly absurd. And yet, the dream lives on.
• If Patter is as hyper-nutso as his older brother, Sweet Cheeks and I will be at the emergency room on a monthly basis.
• If my sons are anything like Sweet Cheeks and his brothers as young boys, I will never be granted peace from worrying that they are literally about to kill eachother. And if they are anything like SW and his brothers as teenagers, I will constantly worry about alcohol.
• If my sons are anything like the males on my side of the family, they will either end up dead, brain damaged, suicidal, or disaffected, and also struggle with alcohol. Oh, and drugs too!
• No cool baby girl dresses from Shabby Apple.

 

There you have it, folks. Further proof that I can pout and bitch with the best of them when I don’t get exactly what I want. And we wanted a girl. (Is this boy healthy? Yes. Obviously, this is all that should matter.)

Before I left work to pick Pitter up at daycare yesterday, I acknowledged that wave of emotion I had at the doctor’s office and I let it overtake me. I wailed and I cried in the car for ten minutes. And then I wiped my eyes and drove to pick up my firstborn son to tell him that he will have a brother in the fall.

“Shistah?” he said in response.

No, Pitter. Bruddah.

 

4 Comments

Filed under pitter, pregnant!, woe is me