what's going to happen

[metaphortunate]

People ask me if the Junebug knows what's going to happen. Y'all, I didn't know what was going to happen before I had the Junebug, and I had been to birth classes and read books and stuff. I think people are expecting a little too much of the understanding of a two-year-old. We tell him there's a baby in Mama's tummy, and the baby will come out soon, but we tell him a lot of things.

You know, if the Junebug had been born a girl, we wouldn't be having another baby now. Which sounds like I really want a girl, but that's not what it is. What it is, is that I am unreasonably terrified of recreating the dynamics of my birth family, and the possibility of living with an older sister-younger brother duo again is not one I could have faced.

And of course, yes there is the possibility that the Junebug may turn out to be trans, but if so, whatever that turns out to be like, at least it won't be like how I grew up.

Thinking a lot about gender, because of not knowing what Hypo will be. (Still no one believes us. Not my mom, not the people at the daycare. "You're still not telling?") I'm going to be sad no matter what, I think half-facetiously. I don't want Hypo to be a girl, another tiny little scrap of human vulnerability in a world that hates girls. But I don't want Hypo to be a boy and then know for a fact that I'll never see a child of mine carry a child of her own*. And I must admit that I think girl and boy are the soft options and if Hypo turns out to be neither/or then they'll have it even tougher. I think I'd just like Hypo to continue existing in this blessedly gender-free state for as long as possible. Poor little one. Why on earth would I ultrasound Schroedinger's junk and end that state sooner than I had to?

Me, I'm still being unprecedentedly femme for me. Last pregnancy I would never have worn dresses, or leggings; this time around I am taking 100% advantage of my presentation gender's permission to basically wear pyjamas all day, i.e. leggings and tunics. Shit yes. Although I still have weird feelings about enjoying wearing makeup and such. D'you know, though, the Junebug is making me feel better about it? Because he gets such giggling joy out of wearing his Cars shirt or his doggie shirt or his trousers with the airplanes on them or his shoes with the fire trucks on them. Caring about what the things we wear look like seems surprisingly innate somehow.

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*Yes, I know maybe neither kid nor proto-kid will choose to have a kid at all, and that will genuinely be fine. But it will be weird to have half the options closed off already. And also, yes, a little sad. Having made the decision to reproduce, it's easy to emotionally go all the way and think that it would be nice for it to go on into the future.

Comments

[kate_nepveu]

When SteelyKid was FutureBaby, we did not find out the sex: it was known because we had chromosome tests, but we asked them not to tell us. But I apparently looked exactly the stereotype of someone having a boy, to the point where complete strangers would look at me and say, "so, you're having a boy?"

One of those complete strangers was one of the nurses at my doctor's. Which caused me a morning of that same kind of possibilities-closed-off feeling that you express, until Chad convinced me it was small talk and not something she saw in the chart.

(We asked about the sex with FutureSibling, now the Pip, because somehow it felt like the right thing, but we didn't tell anyone.)

[metaphortunate]

That was a truly amazing autocorrect error! I spent a long time marveling at it. :)

[wild_irises]

Why on earth would I ultrasound Schroedinger's junk and end that state sooner than I had to?

My reasons for not doing amnio back in the day were very different from yours, but I love this sentence beyond articulation!

[jesse_the_k]

Yes, this sentence made me attach MyGuy to the sofa and hear a paragraph from one of my mysterious electric friends.

There may be ambiguity in the gestation, but none in the adoration of the sentence.

[snippy]

You get what you get, in that they decide what they are. I got two cisgendered heterosexual males, and I was scared to death of having a girl because I was so sure I'd screw her up the way all the women in my family are screwed up (not that the men aren't, too, but my sister and I were two girls and a mother, i.e., an all-female family, for a long time so I didn't experience how parenting males in my family screws them up).

[metaphortunate]

You get what you get & you don't get upset, yep. Parenting words to live by. :P

[spuffyduds]

Goodness. We didn't find out ahead of time for either Thing. People don't BELIEVE you? That is just BIZARRE.

[metaphortunate]

It is truly weird.

[jrtom]

I'm sorry that none of our kids turned out to be girls, in part because I would have liked to help raise a girl, in part because it would have been a qualitatively different experience than raising a boy in what I expect would have been interesting ways, and in part so that Megan wouldn't feel so outnumbered. :/

But on the other hand, at least this way I won't be directly responsible for an offhand comment that will create ugly echoes down the halls of my daughter's memories for decades to come. (I have enough female friends whose fathers have done this that it's something I'd worried about.)

So, yeah.

[metaphortunate]

Yeah. :( Of course, we're going to screw them up *somehow*, and probably not notice at the time. I've made up my mind to it, and just decided to try to do the right thing more often than not.

[alanj]

There are reasons why I am eager to read anything you post about your children, whereas most parent-posts bore me to tears, and the phrase "Schroedinger's junk" encapsulates a lot of them. :)

[metaphortunate]

Thank you. :)