The day of the mid-term ultrasound arrived and we had one question about the pending arrival. Baby boy? Or baby girl?
The technician was from Eastern Europe, guessing Poland. In clear but broken English she explained the procedure while she squirted a generous helping of goo onto Diana’s stomach.
“I will examine all baby’s parts. I will take many measurements. Also pictures. After I finish, doctor will look at my pictures. Maybe he will look at baby himself. I will tell you baby’s approximate weight and, if you like, gender of baby.”
“We like.” I said, an attempt to meet her halfway in the language department. She gave me a blank look, puzzled.
“We want to know if it’s a boy or a girl,” Diana clarified.
The technician understood and smiled. “Yes of course.”
She removed a wand from her workbench and pressed it into the goo. She moved it around until an image snapped into focus on the screen. Not immediately clear what it was, but then it was pulsing. The baby’s heart! The technician tapped a button on the console and sound of the baby’s heartbeat filled the room.
Guh-gunh! Guh-gunh! Guh-gunh!
“Heartbeat is 144. Excellent.”
She moved the wand around like a next generation computer mouse.
“Placenta is on top. Good.”
More wand movement.
“Baby’s head is down,” she said.
She proceeded to spend what was in my opinion an excessive amount of time measure various parts of the noggin area. Occasionally she snapped a picture for the doctor to review.
Then more wand movement and pictures. Arms, legs, stomach, kidneys.
And even more want movement and measuring.
I was impatient. Yes good, the baby has all its fingers and toes. Very nice. I felt like Diana and I were in a contest to see who could resist asking the longest. Diana snapped first.
“Can you tell the gender?” she asked.
“Not yet.” The technician smiled. I was now convinced that she had been stalling on purpose, but now that she had broken us, perhaps she would move more quickly.
We’re we already bad parents, uninterested in the health of the baby? Perhaps it was natural to be so anxious about the gender. After all, we had been discussing both boy and girl names, soon we would only need to discuss one. The girls were excited to know if they had a baby brother or sister on the way. We had the code worked out. If a girl I would text “ XX”. If a boy, “XY”.
Then there was the question of what we wanted. Were we good citizens, truly gender neutral? Just as long as its healthy, we chorused with other parents. But did we have a preference? With so many brothers it seemed a bit odd that boys were absent from the Manhattan Tidd household. However despite my many male siblings, or perhaps because of them, I have always liked being around girls.
Can’t say why, exactly, but suspect the explanation is a simple one: Growing up my closest friend was my one sister, Allison. Riotous giggles in the backseat of the car. Waiting each morning together, usually freezing, for the school bus. In the summer swimming together in the leaky pool (also freezing). Sneaking treats from the cupboard. Playing games. One year we woke early each summer morning to continue a marathon game of monopoly that went on for weeks and to this day might be a world record (I checked online with Guinness and found nothing except some silly child who thought 4 ½ hours might be it). We explored the big house together, made a lot of noise and messes together, and together were yelled at and punished by our wise, sweet, darling mother who just wanted what was best for us, along with some peace and quiet.
In high school many of my friends were girls. I spent study halls in the library at a table with Amy, Shari, and Brenda. We did homework, talked about dating (other people, always), dreamed about post-high school adventures, and generally had a good time.
This is not to say I understood girls. Quite the contrary, their thought processes have been a source of consistent wonder and bafflement. I spent many hours contemplating the most important differences. For example, why they would go to the bathroom in twos? My teenage brain whirring: Water… chance of floods… Noah and the Ark…
I could never figure it out.
Needless to say I was also a dating idiot.
I will say that you do learn a lot about girls when you have your own. Three daughters and you are a bon-a-fide expert. For example, they fart just as much as boys. Perhaps more.
Yes I have learned many things that I am happy to share, little grasshoppers.
You might think that I had all the girls I needed in my life. My wonderful, beautiful mother, about whom I can’t say enough good things. My sister and childhood friend. My partner in crime and soon-to-be bride. Annika, Margaret, Sophie, their many cousins and friends. You might be justified, in a purely hypothetical way, in thinking that another girl in my life would be, well, one too many.
It’s possible that a lesser man would feel uncomfortable looking down the dinner table, as I did recently, at ten women and girls, and would secretly wish for odds that were a little more balanced. Just one little boy, he might think. Perhaps just there at the opposite end of the table, to balance things out a little bit. Someone with whom he could exchange a knowing smile as if to say: You and me, little man. We can handle this.
In the absence of any backup, the Lesser Man might manage his discomfort by, say, belching loudly and ordering another beer.
But not me. The more estrogen the merrier, in my mind. When someone needs to go to the bathroom, there are multiple other girls to go with her. No need for me to get up.
On the other hand…
The technician moved the wand again and the image on the screen fluttered into focus. There were two bones, femurs. And in between an unmistakable nub.
“Is boy,” she said. There was no question or doubt in her voice.
Diana and I looked at the screen, then at each other, then back at the screen.
The technician was typing. The word that appeared on the screen captured the emotion I was feeling.
“BOY!!”
My first thought, I confess, was whether the number of exclamation points corresponded to anything. What can I tell you?
I am a boy.
And I am going to have a son.
The rest of the session passed in a blur. When the technician had finished the doctor (also from Eastern Europe, guessing Russian) came in and flipped through the photos. He saw nothing alarming and soon we were done and out of the hospital and down on the street feeling very happy. We tried to reach the girls but hadn’t heard back from them. We strolled over toward the park. We called our parents with the news.
I felt and still feel very happy. There is a sense of completion about having a boy. Something that perhaps we sensed but wouldn’t vocalize. In the end, while we would have loved another girl in our lives, I can’t quite say I was one hundred percent gender neutral.
We were standing in Columbus Circle when we finally connected with the girls. I typed the secret code: “XY.”
We waited. In less than a minute the response came back.
“Awesome.”
Perhaps none of us were.
