Susanne Remic is a primary school teacher, freelance writer and parenting blogger. She writes at Ghostwritermummy and Maternity Matters and in between all of that she regularly wins mummy of the year awards for running around after her two children, aged six and 19 months. This is her pregnancy blog: an online diary of her third pregnancy as she strives to overcome two difficult births, one angel child and one awkward toddler. Join Susanne as she shares every step of her journey from bump to baby!
Surprise, baby
By Susanne Remic on 29 Sep 2011
We’ve decided that we won’t be finding out the gender of this baby at the 20 week scan. We already have one of each and both pink and blue clothes currently reside in chubby bags in the attic. We’re ready for whatever Mother Nature decides to bless us with. But, man, this is going to be hard!
There are exactly 16 days until that 20-week scan. That’s 16 days in which we might change our minds and decide that, actually, not knowing the sex of the baby is going to kill our rather inpatient selves. We’re the kind of people that just have to know something immediately, or have something straight away once we’ve agreed that we have to have it.
We’re a little impulsive, I suppose. We decided to get married and just went and did it. Later ventures have been a little less drastic but no less impulsive. If we make the decision, we see no reason to wait. Whether it’s a car or a computer- if we want it, we want it now. That’s why having a ‘yellow’ bump is so difficult sometimes.
Take choosing names, for example. There are no boy’s names that I like. Does that mean I am secretly hoping for a girl? Or does it just mean that, if we have a boy, we will call him ‘the baby’ for a while? Hmm.
It was my idea to keep the gender a surprise and I was relieved that the husband agreed. It was he who convinced me in the first place to find out that The Big One was a girl. The whole ‘finding out’ business is more stressful though, in my opinion. Our parents never wanted to know so trying to keep it quiet was hard, especially last time as we felt it was only right to let The Big One in on the secret. It was doomed from then- asking a four year old to keep a secret is a silly idea.
So I have some really valid reasons for wanting to keep this bump yellow, as it were. Firstly, much of the early days with my son were very difficult. His birth had left a permanent scar on my heart and my belly and his (at that point undiagnosed) reflux and lactose intolerance led to some pretty horrific nights filled with screaming. Oh, and days filled with screaming. He was not an easy baby. And that was a big shock, since his sister had been one of those angelic creatures you read about. It was a major shock, to say the least.
So this time, I started to think that perhaps I could avoid making the same mistakes as last time. If I found out the bump was blue, I would expect a baby like The Toddler. Vice versa if I found out it was pink. If it stays yellow, I can make no assumptions. Right? It’s just that I might need someone to remind me why I chose to try being patient for once in my life...
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