Chronicles of Alien Development — What are you?

This is not a gender reveal post.

I realize a solid 78% of you are no longer interested, but indulge me for just a sec.

My husband and I are staunchly committed to letting the alien announce himself or herself upon arrival in this world. And while I stay firmly grounded in the belief that it is the right choice for us, I have to admit, it’s harder than I thought it’d be.

It’s exhausting to regularly rotate pronouns and search my pregnancy-adled brain for gender agnostic euphemisms. If I do slip up and randomly assign a “him” or “her” in conversation, the listening party immediately ignores the substance of my statement thinking they alone have cracked my secret.

There’s a tug of war going on, but it ain’t in my belly.

We recently started the unbelievably laborious task of compiling a baby registry. I am forever indebted to my dear friend who just wrote me a list of “must haves.” We could have paid for college by now if I’d been able to bill for the hours I’ve spent researching the items on that list. There’s a lot to consider — safety, functionality, features, price, and, well, color. Do you register for the blue-ish one or the pink-ish one?

Through this process, I’ve learned that when forced to pick between these two hue extremes, blue is the more ubiquitous color. Pink screams “GIRL!” It just does. Which is interesting because I hate pink. Might I just take a moment to send out profound thanks to those baby crap manufacturers that understand the value of the color gray? Yellow is like the sunshine of my life, but hell, green, brown, and some strange coral/red hybrid that seems to be popular work too. Just not pink. Or blue.

I thought that would be it, that once we got past the color dilemma, we’d go back to decisions based on things like life-saving potential and ability to fit in an overhead bin. But I forgot about pattern. SHIT! Are elephants gender neutral? What about giraffes? Sailboats? I know flowers aren’t, but what if they’re part of a larger nature scene? I’m a Pisces people! I need 3 choices, and 2 of them need to be wrong. “Options” are my nemesis.

We no longer get the question “What are you having?” That has now been replaced by “What do you think you’re having?”, a new party game that has become all the rage among our friends and family. Folks from 7 to 70 have logged bets on what kind of alien is currently crushing my innards. I feel like we should hire a bookie.

And, while I’d like to say I’m above this plebeian fascination with which side of our binary gender assignment system the alien will fall on, I’m not. I kinda sorta maybe want to know too. Except, knowing if our alien is genetically male (XY) or female(XX) or even their physiological gender (penis or vagina) will not even begin to answer my questions. How will they perceive and represent that gender? What will make them feel like a boy or a girl? A man or a woman? And what struggles will they…or won’t they…encounter as a result of being that gender?

It’s also not as simple as just being a boy or a girl. There’s will you be a girly girl or a manly man or maybe a tomboy or a “metrosexual” man (which really just means you smell good all the time, have a deep appreciation for cocktails, and understand the necessity of a good tailor.) Follow that with what will your outward representation of your gender say about you on the playground, on the sports field, when you apply for a job, or look for a mate. What does it mean to be a “man” or “woman”? And why do we think that ultimately starts with the color blue or, God forbid, pink?

This is all presuming that you actually identify with the gender you are assigned — either genetically or biologically. I admit that I don’t understand the experience of being transgendered. Kind of like I don’t get being bisexual. And I’ll never have intimate knowledge of what it’s like to be black, or a man, or homosexual. What I can say is that I sincerely hope my child is not at odds with the gender he or she has already developed because it is challenging enough to start there.

It’s no wonder that our society is struggling to simply be in a world where binary gender and stereotypical gender roles are no longer necessary for physical and financial survival. What is woman? Who is man? And how do we model for our children what it means to be either in a way that celebrates the breadth of opportunity available to us now that we aren’t bound by those parameters?

Our alien, our baby, our Charlie (cheers to gender neutral nicknames!) already knows. He or she has already developed the biology that will tell us what he or she is…at least on the outside. As I fill our baby registry with grays and elephants (not trucks and flowers), I hope I’m doing it not out of avoidance but out of a defiant insistence on opportunity. I hope I’m doing it because I know I, too, will default to gender stereotypes, and I want Charlie to become his or her own embodiment of “girl” or “boy”, not mine. I hope I’m doing it because ultimately this baby will be divinely perfect, and gender matters not in the recognition of that perfection.

My favorite color is yellow. Has been since I was in college. I never knew why, but maybe now I do. Yellow represents all the things I want for Charlie — happiness, positivity, optimism, enlightenment. When she…or he arrives, I want to bathe him…or her in that. I want to start with yellow, introducing my child to the spectrum of opportunity. Charlie will decide from there.

And I’ll always hate pink.