I look up from my work as a gaggle of my middle school students barge into my classroom and line up like a team of teenage vigilantes, fists on hips, chins raised defiantly.
“Mrs. Kibbie,” addresses their leader, “have you found out yet?”
“Guys, I told you — I don’t know the gender of the baby.”
My ears are assaulted by a chorus of seriously’s and are you kidding me’s.
“I thought your husband knew,” another accuses me. “You said last time he knew and he ended up telling you.”
“Yeah, last time he found out and it was supposed to be a secret from me,” I replied, sticking my pen in my hair bun. “And he lasted about 12 hours.”
“OK, but it’s been weeks. Hasn’t he cracked yet?”
“To his credit, no,” I laughed to another cacophony of groans. “I’m not going to find out until the birth.”
“Kibbie, COME ON!”
If you can believe it, this interaction about my baby’s gender is one of the least annoying I’ve had recently
“I have a whole pile of baby boy clothes at my house you could have if you just knew the gender!”
Are they going to expire within the next month? If not, just wait and you can dump them off after I get home from the hospital!
“I was going to make a quilt, but now I’m not sure how to design it!”
This will be a fun challenge for you then: How to not trap a gender identity into a quilt.
“You know you’re going to get a bunch of gender-neutral clothes and toys, don’t you?”
I am aware that this is a possibility and have managed to accept it… somehow… sighs dramatically, hand on forehead
“I don’t know if I can wait that long to find out!”
Uh, too bad?
Good thing I have no problem whatsoever with being a frustrating person! Like most pressure put on pregnant people, this is just ridiculous, and I’m choosing to ignore it, and you should too. I’m too excited about having a surprise now to try to pry into my husband’s head and figure it out. Besides, at this point, I’m just going to honor the secret to be stubborn — and that’s my pregnant mama prerogative!
