Yet another peaceful ultrasound

Everything where it should be and appropriately sized/arranged, including the placenta. Feet are down where I feel kicks. Little labia clearly visible, about which the doctor was oddly sqeamish; the tech had pointed them out happily, but the doctor just focused in on the crotch cross-section and said, "I don't see anything sticking out!"

To be fair, the tech was clearly much, much better at wielding the probe. E.g., her pictures of the four chambers of the heart were lovely; he had to hunt for a while at extremely high resolution to even see a heartbeat. (Not like the guy works, at, um, a perinatal imaging clinic, or something? What does he do all day?)

Question for the day: why are so many of my friends who (unlike me) changed their names upon marriage so much more freaked out than I am by pink baby clothing?

Comments

[Jody]

Congratulations!

I was never freaked out about pink, and I did change my name (indeed, this just came up at the dinner table tonight--I changed middle names to keep my 'maiden' name around--and Gemma kept asking, why? to which I had no good answer other than, well, your dad had a little temper tantrum when I hinted at keeping my old name, at which point Calder started accusing me of being a total revisionist historian...oh geez, where were we?), anyway I can't help you with the clothing thing. I didn't do the pink nursery but the girls picked pink quilts for their upcoming "own rooms" and I'm oddly excited about the preschool gender fest. It's interesting how kids seem to learn about gender by going to drag-like extremes.

P.S. I don't know what to say about the medications and your mom and her doctors. I'm sorry.

[bitchphd]

Awww, good news.

Heh re. pink. When PK was born my dad had a total fit b/c, having for some reason decided I must be having a girl, he had bought some kind of "girl's" outfit for him, but now that PK was a boy, he couldn't give it to him. And I said, why not? And my dad just about lost it.

Ppl are weird.

[Emma also Jane]

Wonderful news about the ultrasound (and about having a girl ;-). The pink thing *so* wears off when you are looking for something for a two-year-old to wear to daycare and ruin, and *everything* in the shop is hot pink, dusty pink, baby pink, rose pink and some-other-the-fuck-pink. I stand there, mentally shouting "Hey marketers, we mothers are out here and we like orange-green-purple-blue-brown-red-anything! other than pink! (except khaki and navy which all the boys' clothes are). It's enough to make you sew them yourself. All right, not quite enough...

So glad for you. I'm looking forward to birth announcements already. Where do I send the quilt?

Emma also Jane

[delagar]

The kid's boyfriend (who's four now, and can drive -- she's so impressed with him) loves pink. Pink sandals, pink shirts, pink tutus. His parents are extremely secure liberals with no issues about their gender roles, and think it's cute as hell, and they let him wear his pink to the local Super Wal-Mart (did I mention we live in Fort Smith, Arkansas?) where they alarm all the other parents.

[thistles]

De-lurking here to say I am also having a girl this summer and have already levvied a pre-emptive strike against the ubiquitous pink! I don't mind a bit of pink, just as I don't mind any other color in moderation. It just makes me SICK that the baby clothing sections EVERYWHERE YOU GO are seperated and gender-coded by color.

I heart hanna andersson. They have baby clothes in primary colors.

[Rachel]

My SIL sent out a strongly-worded message that we were NOT to buy anything pink for my niece. When I arrived to see her 3 weeks after she was born, she was dressed from head to toe in pink.

My brother admitted that after a while they just gave up. But I do look for non-pink things for her. And chuckle silently to myself.

[cecily]

People will stop freaking out at pink baby clothes when everyone refers to their carefully-dressed-gender-neutral baby-girl a boy. Promise. Soon after that, they'll begin using those silly elastic headbands for babies.

[KarenF.]

Congratulations! My beautiful daughter is now 8, and I LOVE PINK! What's wrong with pink??! There are lots of great shades of it, and it goes with lots of other cool colors, like blue and green and black. I love Hannah Anderson clothes, too, even though they can be a bit pricy. Their cotton is so smooth and soft. They do have lots of primary colors, but they also carry some mean pinks! What fun!

[Bella]

Forget your pink woes. Girls clothes have so many more possibilities than boys clothes. Congratulations! It is great news.

[suzanne]

I didn't change my name and I have a two-year-old boy. If I have ever get pregnant again and have a girl, she'll wear all the stuff that her brother wore. More than the pink clothes though, you're going to really be worrying about clothing when she's a teenager. I drive by the high school in my neighborhood and I see these young women in high heels and short shirts and tiny tops. It's scary for me as a woman and I've been there.

[Emma Jane]

I really don't want to admit how much time I've spent around the Hanna Andersson web site in the last two days. If the current Wiggle Pants only matched the current Playdresses... sigh. It was enough of an obstacle that I didn't end up buying, and that's just as well.

The name thing will also be easier. Beaker and I were really hitting a wall with boy names. I feel like it's the same kind of aesthetic issue as for the clothes: ornamentation is acceptable, yet not mandated, for girls.

(Is this the most superficial possible way to respond to gender news, or what?!)

[dpf]

So I'm de-lurking too. First, congrats. Second, the color issue began for me when I discovered while pregnant that all the maternity clothes that year were either pastel (lotsa pink) or horizontally striped. Yeah, I want that tummy to look bigger than it is. Then I didn't find out the sex of my son, so my sister hounded me because she couldn't buy proper clothing unless she knew what the sex was. We got a lot of yellow and green.

With my daughter, the fun part is that lots of girls clothes come in purple, which is my favorite color, so my son calls my daughter a grape. But like you, I don't seem to mind pink as much as I used to. It's been amusing as hell to see Grandpa shopping for little girl clothing. He did not shop for little boy clothing.

Best of luck and I'm delighted at reading your happy updates.

[thistles]

Did I infect you with the Hanna Andersson virus?? Sorry -- they can be a bit pricey but I LOVE their tights (probably not as endearing to you since you don't live in a cold climate) and sometimes they have good sales.

Know what's funny? We are just the opposite on names. It took us 0.4 seconds to arrive at a boy's name. Wouldn't you know it, we are having a girl. Now granted, we COULD just give a girl the same name but -- nah. So we are trying to find something that's unique enough to suit us and yet not so unique that she will hate us forever.

[Rudbeckia Hirta]

Before I was born, my parents were able to agree on exactly one girl's name and exactly one boy's name. (My mother's name choice algorithm appears to have been based on avoiding alliteration and mimimizing the overal name's scrabble score.)

Three+ years later, had my little brother instead been a girl, he (she?) would not have had a name.

They had no more children because they had run out of names.

[Michele]

Congratulations!!! A baby girk, what amazing news!

[Angel]

I think my aversion to pink came from not being an upper middle class barbie...I overcame it by falling in love with Oilily. Then I went and had four sons. :) I'm looking at doing a fresh line for boys that won't make you sell the farm. (Oilily will!) Congratulations on the one that got away from me!