anyone but family what the gender is because we don't want a bunch of pink
or blue things. We'd rather people buy us neutral things.
An example of the kind of idiocy that we're trying to avoid:
I was showing my mother-in-law the crib that we'd picked out before we'd
learned the gender. The picture was of the model we'd chosen in a white
finish.
"Oh, a white finish?" she said, "you know if you have a boy, he's not
going to like that white."
I was baffled, "Why wouldn't a boy like a white finish?" The only
explanation I got was "it just looks girly". Ooookay.
"So what if I was really looking at this natural oak finish?" I asked.
"Well, you know a girl won't like wood finish."
!!!!! WHY WOULDN'T A GIRL LIKE WOOD FINISH?!?!?!?!
This whole conversation just made no sense to me, but people have some wacky
ideas about gender, gender roles, and the 'genderization' of infants. I've
come to the conclusion that although it confuses the heck out of me why
people have such strong opinions on the matter, that this is just the way
that it is. So the best way to avoid having to confront people's strange
gender ideas is to not tell them the gender. So there!
Of course, if you go around telling people that you're not finding out
the gender, then that opens you up to a whole different variety of
criticism, so my husband and I decided to essentially lie to our friends and
tell them that we tried to find out the gender, but the baby just wasn't in
a good position and we weren't able to tell.
Unfortunately, I neglected to specifically instruct my mother not to go
around telling non-family members what the gender of the baby was going to
be, so she told her obnoxious friend and of course that obnoxious friend
went and blabbed all over my facebook wall about not being able to wait to
meet my "little man". Grrr. I deleted the post and sent her a short
message (I was late getting back to my desk from lunch and was typing on my
phone) to please watch what she says on Facebook because we weren't publicly
announcing the gender of the baby. If she would have bothered to read any of
my recent statuses, she would have seen that we "didn't know" what the
gender was and that might have given her pause, but I found the comment
quickly and deleted I hope before anyone could see. She wasn't told not to
tell, so I really couldn't blame her or my mom. It was my oversight that
cause the issue in the first place.
I called my mom and left her a voicemail that I goofed up and forgot to
tell her not to tell everyone and their mother that we were having a boy.
She called me back and said she understood why we'd want to do it that way
and that was that...so I thought.
A bit later in the day, I got a call on my phone from my mom's friend.
I was working, so I let it go to voicemail figuring she'd just want to
apologize anyway. Boy was I ever wrong! She left me a long, hateful
voicemail about how I was being rude to her and that she was unfriending me
immediately. Apparently, the main source of injury was that my message to
her was so short and brusk. Sigh. I don't even think I'm going to call her
back to try to explain that I was in a hurry and typing on my phone which is
difficult and that it wasn't really her fault. She's emotionally unstable
and this is not the first round of drama she's brought into my life
unnecessarily, so I'm thinking I'm just going to have to let her go. I know
she'll probably hound my mother about how unfair I was to her, but if mom
doesn't want to deal with people who bring the drama, then it's her
responsibility to cut ties.
I'm in a good place in my life. My marriage is good, I have good
friends (that I really should make more time for), our finances are stable
and life is pretty stress-free. Of course a lot of the reason that life is
stress free is because I consciously made an effort to eliminate the people
and habits in my life that were the sources of my stress. So yeah. Each
person has to determine what level of drama they're willing to live with.
Some people like it. Some thrive off of it. Some go through a drama phase.
It's just not for me.
So hopefully nobody was checking their facebook feed today midday. And
if they did, maybe I'll just play it off by saying "well, everyone has their
guesses".
****
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