Chutney Making for Beginners

Big ups to Jay, my partner in this baby-making empire for coming up with the title of this post. Chutney, (or Chutters) is the (public) name we’ve given our baby. It’s a private joke we’ve shared about what we’d call our kids. We shared that name with a few friends and some of the attempts at cute responses have traumatized me, but that’s another story for another post.

It’s not baby’s real name. We’re keeping that to ourselves. We want to keep at least some element of this baby’s arrival a surprise ’cause, let’s face it, keeping details about your baby these days can be a challenge. Everybody has an opinion.

Per ejemplo – we initially didn’t want to find out the gender of our baby. Then my curiosity got the better of me, but I was cool with not finding out, because Jay said he didn’t want to know. My feelings on the matter really weren’t that strong. And a big part of me felt like I wanted to let Jay have a say on something.

Telling people we weren’t going to find out created some interesting reactions. We were told on more than one occasion, ’you should find out; it will help you plan better.’ I say plan for what?! We’re about to get hit by a roller coaster no matter what we do, how is the colour of our baby’s clothes going to make any difference? If you mean on issues of circumcision, for example, we’ve already discussed that! I even noticed a few (subtle yet patronizing) eye rolls.

Anyway, none of that mattered, by the time our 20th week rolled around, we’d got to see our baby’s face on the ultrasound. We were far more excited about that than knowing the gender. Our baby was starting to look like a human being! We were so excited about seeing the face we were caught off guard when the technician asked us that very important question. This is how the conversation went:

Technician: Do you want to know the baby’s gender?

Me, ‘cleverly’ replying to her question with a question with a question: ”Nooooooooooo…??’

Jay: Doesn’t respond. He’s too hungry to respond. He sees me looking sideways at him.

Technician: ’uh, you didn’t sound too sure’.

So Jay comes wid it: ‘you know… yeah, go ahead. Tell us, it’ll stop us trash talking each other about whose won this one’. (Damn. He called us out. Until that day, we’d spent weeks playfully calling each other out on the  gender game. I told him I thought it was a girl. My lovely husband, being quite the contrarian (by his own admission), countered, telling me that his seed had produced a boy.)

The technician does her best. This baby kept it’s legs firmly crossed. We’re all getting bored.

Me: ‘well, if it’s a girl, you don’t have to worry Jay, at least she knows how to keep her legs crossed!’

Jay: <blacks out for 60 seconds>

I saw a little piece of Jay die inside. But he recovered quickly. I felt a little bad once I realized that I had uttered words that no man wants to hear his wife say about his ‘potential daughter that was possibly a son until 3 minutes ago’. Then I got over it and laughed. I thought it was a funny quip.

They couldn’t confirm the gender of our baby this time around.We had to return four weeks later to take more shots.

And let me say this now, before I finish the story: life has a VERY funny way of paying you back.

When we returned for our follow-up appointment (which also took four hours and involved more running man, jumping, and a bonus move, in which I was turned almost upside down, just to get this child off my bladder), the doctor was able to finally confirm the gender of our child. This is what she said:

‘Ah, I see her labia! See? There! Look, it’s a girl! Congratulations!

I looked at Jay, I recall him shaking his head gently, but I’m not sure, because I pretty much blacked out on the spot.

Words no parent should ever hear about their daughter.

So there you have it. We’re having a girl, who, according to Jay has my cheekbones and personality. I think she has his eyes. Personality wise, she’s gonna know her own mind and give us a run for our money. That makes us happy. It means she won’t be a push over. I love that. Meanwhile, Jay can’t wait to get her on a snowboard. Oh boy.