One night I embrace the algorithm and lie in bed, scrolling through suggested videos: a series of gender-reveal parties. My timeline is filled with targeted ads for maternity clothes, and my explore page is all pictures of babies, bellies, stretch marks, signs that say 12 weeks, and tips for expecting mothers. INSTAGRAM KNOWS I’M pregnant before most of our close friends or even my parents do. My husband has no physical symptoms in “our” pregnancy, another reminder of how different a woman and man’s experience of life can be.
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There is no one to feel it with me-the sharp muscular aches in my lower abdomen that come out of nowhere while I’m watching a movie or the painful heaviness of my breasts that now greets me first thing every morning. Despite having a loving partner and many female friends ready to share the gritty details of their pregnancies, I am ultimately alone with my body in this experience. Pregnancy is innately lonely it’s something a woman does by herself, inside her body, no matter what her circumstances may be.
It’s kind of a joke, but just like the remark we make about our child’s gender, there is truth behind it. “It just seems unfair,” I say, and we both laugh. I resent that his entire family’s DNA is inside of me but that my DNA is not inside him. My husband likes to say that “we’re pregnant.” I tell him that while the sentiment is sweet, it’s not entirely true. As my body changes in bizarre and unfamiliar ways, it’s comforting to obtain any information that might make what’s coming feel more real. But no matter how progressive I may hope to be, I understand the desire to know the gender of our fetus it feels like the first real opportunity to glimpse who they might be. I like the idea of forcing as few gender stereotypes on my child as possible. Who will this person be? What kind of person will we become parents to? How will they change our lives and who we are? This is a wondrous and terrifying concept, one that renders us both helpless and humbled. There is a truth to our line, though, one that hints at possibilities that are much more complex than whatever genitalia our child might be born with: the truth that we ultimately have no idea who-rather than what-is growing inside my belly. WHEN MY HUSBAND AND I tell friends that I’m pregnant, their first question after “Congratulations” is almost always “Do you know what you want?” We like to respond that we won’t know the gender until our child is 18 and that they’ll let us know then.
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