Let's talk about sex.

First of all, I never call it the gender of the baby because I am still an editor (even if I don't edit my own blog posts too carefully) and technically, it's the sex of the baby, not the gender. Well, at least according to a paper I did in college that required me to consult five English usage dictionaries and report on what they recommended. The general consensus seemed to be that "gender" was a euphemism because people didn't want to say the word "sex," which is increasingly associated with physical intercourse. Anyway, it's odd that I'm a stickler on this one because generally I'm the go-with-how-the-language-is-actually-used sort of editor. I'm really progressive that way.

Which leads me to believe that I choose to call it the sex because I actually enjoy the fact that people use that less frequently and will be more shocked by a blog post entitled "Let's talk about sex" than a blog post entitled "Let's talk about gender."

So after that English usage lesson (or discussion, or brief commentary), did you actually expect to learn the sex of my baby?

Tomorrow I have my regular visit to the doctor. It will be my 18-week visit. (Crazy to think that I'm two weeks away from being half-way through!) And tomorrow, we will find out when we get to find out what we're having. We'll schedule our ultrasound.

Of course, we could always just run off to the mall and find out. But then I heard a horror story about how the poorly-trained mall technicians can actually ruin your baby by leaving the thing in one place too long. But I hear that's for the 3-D stuff, not a regular ultrasound.

The point is, tomorrow I'll try to have them schedule me asap for my ultrasound and have it done the right way (albeit the quick, technical, we-see-these-all-the-time-and-you-can-
wait-4.5-more-months-to-see-it way).

Once I set up the appointment, I'll put up a poll and you can all weigh in on what I'm having, after I put up a list of my "tells" according to wives' tales. I'll warn you right now. One site said that I have a 42% chance of having a boy and a 57% chance of having a girl. So apparently I might have to add the "hermaphrodite" choice to my poll since I have a 1% chance of having one. Things to think about as you prepare to guess the SEX of my baby.

2 comments:

Unknown said...

I feel harassed by this post.

Ellen said...

i'm so glad to see the proper use of this word. one time in a church talk i was speaking about how i was glad to be a woman... and i said: "i'm glad to be a member of this SEX"... really loud over the microphone. while i turned bright red, i was glad that i'd said it that way... and was actually complemented for its proper use later that day.