Do You Like Surprises?
Do you like surprises? If you answered “yes, but I like to have a little heads-up from my bestie” then you are probably the type of person who wants to find out the gender of your unborn baby. Amiright?
These days with technology so accessible to us, we rarely have to wait until later to find out the answers to our questions. Everything from “who will the Bachelorette choose in the end?” to “will using certain essential oils be dangerous to my unborn baby?” can be answered in a millisecond thanks to Google, Yahoo and other like search engines.
Interestingly, I’m finding fewer parents to be are opting for the ultimate surprise – their baby’s gender! I mean, it’s 50/50 and for many people, 40 weeks is an eternity to wait for such exciting information. Of course their decision to find out is usually carefully explained and defended in practical terms; we don’t want to waste money on pink when we should be buying blue; we only want to paint the nursery once and we’re not into “yellow”, etc, etc. But is it really just that? Practical answers for practical questions or has something totally changed in our society that prevents us from being able to wait? To have no control or concrete information is stressful and this generation seems anxious to experience that sort of stress. And besides, the newest trend of having gender revealing parties is quite the rage these days!
I remember with both of my pregnancies (25 years ago), I chose to “be surprised” and pondered the gender questions for every month, week and day until their births. Back then, although the ultrasound could tell you the gender, we didn’t have “Facebook Official” statuses to update so the pressure for having 3D-ultrasound pics to post on social media sites was not of high importance. Anyway..in both cases, I had chosen names for either a boy or girl and started to adopt personalities for each even though I knew there was only one baby in there. After talking, singing and loving my unborn for the whole of each pregnancy, I fell in love with two babies, each with a name and personality. Here’s the problem...On May 8th (coincidentally, Mother’s Day that particular year) I was ecstatic to finally meet my baby. Surprise – it’s a SHE and I already felt a strong bond which was lovingly nurtured for over nine months.
Simultaneously though, I mourned for the son I had “lost”. Sounds crazy? Ya, I thought so too but for me, the sadness was real and true. I’m not sure how long I mourned; having a newborn makes the passing of time blurry sometimes. Thankfully though, my sadness did eventually pass and I got on to loving and caring for the one child I did have. To this day though, I can think of my “spirit” children fondly and for that, I smile.
Who knows which way is best; knowing or not knowing is a personal choice and thanks to the advancement of technology, waiting for anything seems like something of the past and in the end, a healthy baby is really what we’re hoping for!
