Gender Bender

Better than being a girl. Like you. You're a girl!

Nearly everybody who has had a child, or is preparing to have one, has said, "I just want a healthy baby.  I don't care what it is."  This statement, for all intents and purposes is total BS.  (Side note: I had a teacher in college that always said "intense purposes" instead of "intents and purposes".  I never heard her say it, but I always imagined she also said the word "bur-gina").  Saying you don't care if it's a boy or a girl is like saying you don't care what type of ice cream someone gives you.  You're either a chocolate or vanilla person, period.  If you order a swirl cone in Alabama they release the dogs and spray you with a fire hose.

What gender you prefer is completely dependent on about a billion different variables.  Guys want a son they can pal around with and roughhouse.   Girls want a little princess they can dress-up.  Some dudes want a girl because they know she'll be a daddy's girl, and vice-versa for women.  But, in general people want a little version of themselves that they can live vicariously through, you know, because people are morons.  Expecting your child to be another you is one of the biggest ways that you can really screw up their life.  

As a man, most people probably expect that I would want a boy.  And while a boy would be great, (I just want a healthy baby.  I don't care what it is) I am leaning more toward a girl.  There are two main reasons for this.  First, teenage boys kind of creep me out, what with the smell and all.  Second, with a girl, my wife gets to handle the hard stuff, and I just skate on by.  The bonus would be that I get to dress her up like a princess.  My dog is getting pretty sick of wearing tutus and tiaras.  

The great thing about having a boy would be the whole "boys will be boys" aspect.  There are many aspects of life that boys get a pass on simply because they are boys.  Just ask Warren Zevon (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uJefPK_UkdM).  But you'll need a Ouija board to do that.  In truth it is just harder to be a woman in our society.  I'm not even going to cite examples, it's just true.  The easier the life my kid has, the better.  It makes my job as a parent easier.  Also, if you have a boy, they can play professional sports and send home million dollar checks every few months.  Cha-ching.

So if you feel like you want to pick what gender you're having there are some ways you can do it.  One program essentially filters through sperm using the differential in mass between the heavier XX sperm and the lighter XY sperm (NERD!).  All well and good if you want to cough up a few thousand dollars.  You could also take your egg and sperm stuffs to a lab, mix them up for you, grow some babies, wait until they get far enough along, do a DNA test for gender, and then implant them in you lady.  Not a great option for the cheap or those who don't like to waste babies.  You could also take advantage of science on your own.  If you try to conceive at the beginning of ovulation where the egg is further away, the larger XX sperm have a chance to even out with the faster XY sperm.  Conceiving later in ovulation gives your lighter XY sperm a chance to sprint for the closer egg.  It's essentially the difference between a sprinter and a distance runner.  I'd say the chances of success for one over the other are about 50%.  Not bad.  

So, when should you find out whether you having a Luke or a Leia?  You could just wait until the thing comes shooting out.  The doctor holds up the screaming mess and says, "It's a XXX!"  Of course, the doctor could always pull the thing out and say, "Holy Shit!  I've never seen that before."  

In the old days when Luke was a biblical character and Leia was some made-up hippie name, people just had to guess at what the sex was.  We all know some of these old wives tales.  Carrying high it's a boy, or if you're carrying low it's a girl.  Again, presumably because all those XX chromosomes in the girl are weighing her down.  Also, apparently if one breast is larger than the other it denotes whether it is a boy or a girl.  Here, let me check.  One of the creepier signs is if the dark line on your wife's belly only goes to her belly button it is a girl.  If it goes all the way to her ribs, like something will come bursting out at any moment, the baby is a boy.  Of course you could always just add the conception age of your wife to the month the baby was conceived.  Odd is a girl, even is a boy.  It's math, it must be true.

The great thing about the time we live in is that modern science is amazing.  Now we can find out what sex the baby is as early as 15 weeks.  Who doesn't want this critical point in their lives to be punctuated by the ultrasound tech announcing, "There's his little pee-pee!"?  Unfortunately, sex determination from an ultrasound is only about 85-90% effective.  Apparently, the baby has to be in the exact right position because all their business parts just look like weird lumps.  

Sometimes the baby just doesn't appreciate the invasion of privacy.

I don't know how I'm going to tell people what the sex of my baby is.  I was thinking if it's a boy I could come out and hold him in the air with a stereo playing "The Circle of Life".  Of course if the first song my baby hears is by Elton John, I'd prefer it to be "Rocket Man".  Many people now have Gender Reveal Parties.  You could cut into a cake with pink or blue frosting in front of all your friends and family.  Or, you could flash the ultrasound picture of your baby's crotch on a TV and play "Guess the Dingus".  Trust me, your kid is probably going to resent your for stuff anyway, why not get your kicks too.

No matter what you have, be sure to take care of it and love it.  After all, they will be picking the flavor of gruel you get when you can no longer feed yourself.

Next time:

The Baby Room

The Horror...

In the classic Francis Ford Coppola (or as Nick Cage calls him "Unckie Franky") film "Apocalypse Now", Marlon Brando plays a renegade army colonel holed up in Cambodia.  He and his guerrillas use the neutral country to avoid the US military and wage their own war on sanity and human decency.

This is what your baby is now doing to you.

All 4D ultrasounds look a little like Colonel Kurtz.  Or maybe it's Swoosie Kurtz.

Ok, so people with brains the size of a pea can hardly be insane, or wage war for that matter.  It is more appropriate to say that the baby has arrived at your door with a very large amount of baggage.  Yes, everyone has excess luggage.  Unfortunately, when we're first born, we're so small our parents have to carry our bags for us.  So if you're planning on children, start the emotional weightlifting now.  Have your wife browbeat you for no reason.  Tell the doctor to wait an extra month before giving you the test results for that toothache you had.  Maybe suggest to your boss that they cut your pay indefinitely.  Whatever you can do to get your feelings constantly in flux, do it.  It might slightly help to prepare you for this baby stress.

At the second doctor's appointment you'll get to hear all the terrible things that could be wrong with your child.  They have screenings that can help determine if you're at higher risk for a variety of different genetic problems.  Your kid got too many chromosomes?  Not enough chromosomes?  Is your child's spine developing outside of it's body?  Want to know if your baby will eventually develop a life threatening disease that won't even be noticeable until they reach middle age?  Well we can tell you!

What they don't really tell you is that for most of these things there are really only two options.  Deal with it, or the other thing.....

It sucks. Suddenly you realize how little control you have. You're Martin Sheen and you're deep in the Cambodian jungle with a madman and a legion of his military trained and brainwashed followers.  So how do you slowly rise out of that jungle river and murder your fears with a giant bowie knife?

Didn't that guy coach the Mighty Ducks?

My first step was to just try to not think about it.  Cause that'll work.  It's like the first time you heard about the swine flu.  People were telling you how bad it would be, and how everyone was going to die.  You listened quietly keeping calm and collected, all the while thinking, "Oh shit, oh shit, oh shit, oh...."  Every time you developed a tickle in your throat you had to choke back a cough.  If you did cough or sneeze you knew it was time to write your will.  After a while you realize, the quickest way for you to get over it is by living life.  There's an old saying, "Hold on to bad thoughts too long and they turn to brown soup in your bowels.  Move on with your life and you'll poop true."  That's good advice for anyone.

It is also good to keep in mind the health of you and your spouse.  If you're young and healthy there's no reason to think your baby won't be fine.  If you make an omelette with expired eggs it may not turn out well.  However, if you use fresh eggs, you're not going to test it first or expect it to be bad, you'll just dig in.  Right?  (Seriously, that's not rhetorical, I'm not too sure about that analogy.)  

Of course there is always good old statistics to relieve your stress.  For instance, your chances of having  a baby with Spina Bifida is about the same as getting dealt a Royal Flush in poker.  Take it from someone who has played thousands of hands of poker: those are not good odds.  So really you've got an amazing chance at a winning baby, and a shit chance at the perfect poker hand.

The truly scary thing is that the fear will never leave.  You will always be worried about your child's health and happiness.  Really, that's good news.  This sort of empathy will prove you are not a cyborg.  It also means you are going to make a fine parent.  If you do not care about your child it is possible you are a cyborg built with synthetic memories to make you think you are human.  It is much more possible that you are a sociopath.  Why go through all the work of having a child if you don't give a damn about it?

So I guess there is no reason to be afraid of the giant ball of stress you've made for yourself.  You just have to live life and realize that bad things will happen, you just have to deal with them.  That's why I write.  It keeps my mind off worrying and on the happier things.  Plus it allows me to make an ass of myself in a hitherto unused media.  Lord knows I've embarrassed myself in just about every other way imaginable.

See....

Next Time:

Gender Bias