the lady

I was at a luncheon recently. And as one might expect there was heaps of lovely food laid out and great coffee and of course there was also a lady -- one with opinions, lots of them. I am too am opinanated - so I try not to judge this trait in others. Sometimes I postively relish listening to others pontificate their views --- and sometimes I, well, don't.

The Lady O'Opinions is of an age where I secretly think 'hey, we're both menopausal, but I'm the only one that knows it.' Yes I know... its a weird game I play in my head. I think its a bit like when you are a young child who has just realized that all these grown ups in your life have sex, probably - shock of all shocks- repeatedly and therefore must enjoy it, and you torture yourself for awhile trying to make it true in your head. Or was that just me...

Well one of this lady's opinions was that expecting parents really ought never to learn the sex of one's babies before the birth. That it completely takes the surprise out of it... something about that what everyone is dying to know is whether its a boy or a girl.. that there really isn't any news quite like that.

What I thought was what I want to know is are breathing and healthy! Do they have a cleft palate? Was there any internal bleeding? Heart defects? Motor issues? Hearing loss? (okay this is because of my clinical training that these things all pop in my head--sorry folks out there that already have too many things on their worry list – I used to only worry about the things that can go wrong once a baby is born, and was fairly unaware of the things that can go wrong before. Ah now I can worry from all angles!). I would probably would opt to not know, but not because I want to maintain the element of suprise for the world at large!

And then I thought, and nearly blurted out, if I actually get pregnant, the delivery is when I will get to know what colour my baby is.... cuz last I checked ultrasounds show morphology not colour.

... this is probably related to the fact that I haven't yet decided on how to answer the question on the donor recepient profile: "please circle all of the following that are acceptable for you in a donor" and then lists of skin, hair, and eye colour; height options, options for build... it is that not the most bizarre multiple choice ever! Talk about a test you can't study for....

Yeah, probably good that I bit my tongue on that one. I guess I could spin it either way --- the sadness of not having a child who is genetically tied to me and all my family before me OR that I would get to look at that oh-so-theoretical baby with completely fresh eyes. I mean forget the surprise of what sex the baby is.--that's nearly a 50:50 (yeah my work has taught me about the sliver between those two 50's too, but let's ignore that for now)--if we go with donor eggs, we might not have any idea about what our baby's skin, nose, or eyes will look like.

That could be a turly amazing gift.

I wouldn't be looking for glimmers of me in his or her face, I would just be completely open to seeing the humanity passed down from generations of people not related (and quite possibilty a few from way back that are) to me into this one very new person.

Hmmm... I wonder what that would be like. To watch a child grow up and getting to see them
without any preconcieved notions of what they will look like..... no back cover, book jacket flap, reviews, blurbs --- nothing but a human life unfolding one day at a time. Just letting their physical appearance evolve as a surprise. Just as we often do with personality, interests, vocabulary, and all the other ways children suprise us by showing who they really are (and how different that can be from our expectations - even when we think we have none).

Hmmmm....