It's a -- Surprise!
As I’ve mentioned before my wife and I are expecting our second child soon (so soon).With Eli we found out ahead of time that he was a boy, but for this one it’s going to be a surprise. I am totally on board with this.
Except that I’m dying to know! My wife thought it would be more of a surprise and more natural
and several other things that I was not paying enough attention to remember. However, what she neglected to take into consideration was that (in addition to being an exceptional listener) I am a terrible waiter.
To be fair, I did agree to wait to find out the sex. I thought it would be a good exercise in self discipline to wait and knew I’d let the cat out of the bag if I found out and she didn’t. But now I realized I’ve been bamboozled into not finding out -- because she did!
She started with what could be called causal research. When my wife was out, people would frequently ask what she was having (Fatherhood protip: no matter how jokingly you say “a baby, duh” in response to this question, people do not find it funny).
It turns out that oftentimes when you tell someone it’s a surprise, that kind stranger wants to ruin that surprise for you as quickly as possible and proceeds to tell you what you’re having. So, slowly but surely my wife was gathering unsolicited intel on the gender of our unborn child. It also turns out that most of these strangers told her the same thing.
I know, this seems innocent enough. I mean, it’s not like these people know and she wasn’t asking them. But then she started asking. And not just anyone, but a group of people who are considered (by me) to be the oracles of baby gender predicting; French grandmothers.
You see, while pregnant with Eli, our friend’s French grandmother took one look at my wife and said, “it is a boy.” Who knew that the two surest ways to find out what you were having was to have an ultrasound or ask a French grandmother? So, since she didn’t have the all-telling ultrasound to give her the answer this time, my wife presented herself to another all-telling French grandma. And she got an answer.
Then, as if the French grandma oracle thing wasn't enough, my wife got downright scientific.
At home, I found two pictures next to the computer; one of my wife 7 months pregnant with Eli and one of her 7 months pregnant this time. I didn’t think much of it, and fired up the computer only to find a web page still up that explains in detail how the appearance of a mom’s belly indicates the sex of the baby. My wife, who didn’t want to know what we were having, was comparing pictures of her pregnant self to determine if it was a boy or a girl!
I, of course, confronted my wife with the ruinous evidence that she had indeed cheated and found out what we were having. She claimed that what she did was nothing like finding out from an ultrasound. I, wizard of words that I am, responded, “you’re an ultrasound.”
When she started talking to me again the most convincing bit of proof that she had analog ultrasounded herself came to light. The belly picture comparison, the French grandmother, and most of the random-stranger-surprise-ruiners all said the same thing: it’s a girl.
I guess we really won’t know it’s a girl until the baby’s born, but the only way I’m going to be surprised is if it’s not. Because French grandmothers are never wrong.