By Ross Cochran
Being nineteen weeks into your pregnancy is a lot like your 20th birthday. It’s exciting… but you’re really more interested in the next one.
By this time next week I’ll know whether or not my first child will be a girl or a boy. This is assuming two things…
1. That the baby is healthy and that the ultrasound reveals what it is supposed to reveal.
2. That I don’t fall into an excitement-induced coma because I’ll have just learned that my first child is a boy or a girl.
The excitement I feel is comparable to the anticipation of Christmas morning as a kid, plus the eagerness of a standing in line for your favorite roller coaster, plus the happiness that comes from eating bacon. Yes. That’s what I’m feeling right now.
I mentioned this last week but we are finding out the gender of our child, and despite the objections and surprisingly personal criticisms from a number of people we really like and lots of people we don’t know… it’s the decision we made and we have never doubted it.
I’ve heard one basic argument to finding out the sex of the baby at 20 weeks.
“You’ll never have a greater surprise in your life.”
I don’t doubt that, but having a baby isn’t about “surprises” for me. I highly doubt I’m going to be an excellent father of a newborn, I’ve never done it before and I’m not very good at things I’ve never done before. My basic goal in parenting for the first six months is to poop because I’m afraid less often than the baby poops because it’s afraid. Besides, when the baby is born, you have a 50% chance of having your prediction become true. I can’t think of anyone who has ever given birth… and then been SHOCKED at what came out.
So next week I’ll know and I’ll be begin to form a clearer picture of what my life will look like by January of 2016. And I’ll share those insights with you all next week… assuming I can still form words after we find out.
-RC