A boy or a girl???

From April 2, 2010

Here we are in the second trimester and mom and baby (which is the size of a lemon now) are doing fine. My wife’s fatigue seems to be waning, but as she learned yesterday, there are other fun things for her to look forward to as she plugs along. While her mother is staying with us this week for Spring Break, she called home and wanted to talk to her right away. I handed the phone to my mother-in-law and stood by on the sidelines quietly on edge because I was unaware of the nature of the call. I later heard about the swelling from water retention that had erupted during the morning and ratcheted down my stress level. What it boils down to is sodium is bad, and we need to be a little more careful with what she eats.

As for our little “lemon”, we learned at the last OB appointment that it’s an active child. The doctor’s attempt to pinpoint the sound of the heartbeat was nearly impossible due to the baby constantly shifting around to avoid the pokes into my wife’s belly. The speaker on the doctor’s belt emanated the sloshing sounds made by every movement, but eventually we did briefly hear the “thud, thud, thud, thud, thud” of the heartbeat.

When we shared this funny revelation on Facebook, a firestorm of debate was touched off whether it was a boy or girl. Friends relayed personal experiences of their son or daughter being just as active. Then came the inevitable, “Well it must be a girl because of x”, or “It has to be a boy because of x”. Everybody has their theory and their take of how to tell the sex of the baby.

Along with those arguments comes the tired old question, “Do you want a boy or a girl?”, which has been asked about a trillion times.

Now let me go on record as giving the standard cliché answer, “All we care about is that the baby is healthy.” There I said it, written in black and white, and I’m willing to swear on the Holy Bible that it’s the God’s honest truth!

We’ve discussed this as a couple, and we both feel equally torn. To play favorites would mean slighting the other sex. Neither of us are willing to do that, and it seems just plain selfish to me. Bottom line is I won’t be disappointed if it’s not x. Whether a boy or a girl, I still plan on taking them to a baseball game, and play other sports with them as dad should do for as long as the kid is interested. So what if my daughter would rather play with dolls than play catch? Hey, I could have a son that might feel the same way. It truly doesn’t matter, because I will love them both just as much.