What did you want to be when you were young?
Since he was five, J has dreamed of being a father. Kind of a weird dream for a five-year-old if you ask me. I didn’t know what I wanted to be, so I always just said scientist because that was the only job I had heard of at the time.
When I came of child-bearing age, I missed the baby fever that swept through my gender. I don’t gush over babies on the street. I don’t pause at cute baby videos on Instagram. Once my coworker gave her baby to me to hold, and it was so heavy I always dropped it. She also didn’t appreciate me calling her baby an “it”.
Since finding out we were pregnant, J would get teary-eyed whenever he saw another baby, but not me. Other people’s babies are just blobs to me. Utterly meaningless blobs.
My pregnancy symptoms were mild at worst. Amazing I know. But when every baby bump turned out to be just poop, gone after going number 2, I couldn’t help but wonder if I had maybe imagined it all. Pregnancy tests are only 99% accurate after all. None of it felt real.
Until, that is, the first ultrasound.
I honestly wasn’t sure if they would even find anything in there, given how little pregnancy symptoms I felt. Any time the technician made a face, I would freak out. And if she were expressionless, I start to wonder if she was trying to hide some bad news. Eventually, I just had to face the wall to avoid looking at her face.
Then she left the room to get J. Despite my general laidback and pragmatic attitude about babies and pregnancies, I started shaking with nerves. I didn’t know what I would do if she told me that we made a mistake, and it was just a burrito baby. I could sense J’s nervousness when he stepped into the room as well.
It felt like forever before she finished applying the gel again, moving the handpiece around my belly, she finally turned the monitor towards us ‘There’s your baby!’
My jaw literally dropped. I didn’t know what to expect, maybe a blob? But no! It looked exactly like…a baby!
That’s been inside…me…this whole time? I thought incredulously but the only sound I could make was “Wow… wow…wow..” over and over. The technician pointed towards the screen “Leg, arms, and… oh look! It’s waving at you! How adorable!”
I couldn’t sleep that night. I just kept picturing its little arms and legs punching furiously at air, and hands waving back and forth as if to say Hi! Hello! I’m here! I’m real!
Since that moment, the baby became all I could think of. I was hooked. I wanted to get an at-home ultrasound machine so I could see what the baby was doing every minute of every day. But that shit was ridiculously expensive.
It was agonizing without knowing what was happening in there. I couldn’t feel the baby yet and it didn’t talk to me.
Hello baby, are you there? It’s mom. Hello? HELLOOOO????
At my next doctor’s appointment, I was relieved to hear that all tests came back normal. However, she did have a hard time catching the fetal heartbeat. She claimed that she heard it twice. But I didn’t hear it. I only heard my own heartbeat. She reassured me that it was normal at this stage and that next time we’d be able to hear it. I scrutinized her face for signs of deception but found none.
Ok, well, do we at least know the sex of the baby? I asked. Not yet, you’ll find out at the 20-week ultrasound, she replied. OK, but can you put it in an envelope? I requested. We’d like to share the news with our friends and family. Maybe do a cake reveal where we cut into it and it’s either blue or pink. Old school I know, and gender doesn’t really matter. But for some reason, I keep getting this feeling it’s a girl. When I think of baby names, I always forget to think of boy names. And I got a whole bunch of baby clothes already, and somehow they all turned out to be for girls. But of course, if it’s a boy that would be fine because boys can wear pink too!
She waited patiently for me to finish, then said: Sure.
When we left the appointment, I immediately booked my 20-week ultrasound. I asked them if they could do it just a bit earlier…like next week. They said no. Then I called a few other places and tried to trick them into giving me another ultrasound. But eventually, they all caught me in my web of lies and denied me as well.
I knew I was an addict but I didn’t care. I need my next hit of baby, and I need it now. My hands instinctively reached for my phone and went to the Lifelabs website. I compulsively browsed my account at least once a day to see the genetic test results, but it usually just said ‘results pending’.
Then I saw it, uploaded just this afternoon: the test result PDF.
Even though the doctor already told me that the results were negative, I couldn’t help but want to see it for myself. I didn’t know exactly what I was looking for, but I was desperate for any insight into the baby. Maybe the baby’s height? Eye color? IQ? Likes and Dislikes? Anything!
When I opened it, there it was, in big bold letters:
Fetal Sex: Female.
We’re having a girl!!!
Toronto - Shanghai - Vancouver 