“Oh, we don’t have one.”

Pause. Awkward silence. Disblief.

“Do you have any Winnie the Pooh or airplanes or frogs?”

“We have a little of everything. Bright colors, mostly.”

When I say we don’t have a theme, people often look at me as if I am saying my child sleeps in the silverware drawer. This compulsion to put people into boxes is astounding. It is particularly noticeable in baby clothing. Babies have the option of wearing pink daisies or blue tractors. Girl or boy. One side of the spectrum of femininity to the other of masculinity. Where’s the in-between?

Experiencing infertility put me on a heightened awareness of the need for comebacks. People… say things… usually without thinking… a lot… I have yet to master the timing of comebacks, usually they come to me five days after the insensitive remark, however, recently a comeback came out of my mouth in the actual moment I needed it to. Someone asked me how much time I plan on taking off to be with my son and, because I write and go to school, my time doesn’t fit into prescribed blocks. So I said:

“You can’t put me in a box.” (Said in the same tone as “Nobody puts Baby in a corner.”)

Cheesy, yes, but it is surprisingly effective. I think it can be used in many contexts. I plan on using it all the time. Hopefully you can, too.

I’ve said What IF thousands of times during my struggle with infertility. After my second failed IVF, when I hit rock bottom in my heart, when we only had enough money for one more try, when I was convinced that I’d never have the family I wanted, when I couldn’t stand 99% of the people in my life because they had oops babies, when no one said the right thing, when I was merely surviving and not living life, this wave of What IFs hit me:

What IF I was no longer afraid?

What IF I saw that all I needed was not outside of myself, but within myself?

Having a child doesn’t erase infertility. I still struggle, but in new ways. I feel different from most parents. They complain about sleep deprivation, I am grateful for it. They worry about what school their kid will go to, I’m glad to have worries that involve children. Infertility changed me. I feel stronger and more solid in my decisions. I know what I want. I don’t stress about the What IFs because I know my husband and I can handle anything that comes our way.

Now I wonder:

What IF each of us knew our strength going into infertility rather it being a lesson afterwards?

Happy belated National Infertility Awareness Week. Although, for me, every day is National Infertility Awareness Week.

So many people say how words can’t describe parenthood.

To me parenthood post infertility is like those Makit & Bakit stained glass sunkatchers. In the beginning the shape is sterile, empty. We sprinkle a little loss, a little joy, a little resentment, a little hope into each part of our experience. We bake it for a year, or two, or ten months, or ten years and it is transformed into, well, a pastel unicorn.

There are many words to describe parenthood. Most people are too lazy or scared to reach down and touch that part of our hearts. Usually it takes a traumatic experience, like a failed embryo transfer or an adoption that did not go through, to find the courage to travel the scary emotional landscape. Although, as those of us who have gone there know, it is in this place anything is possible. The words happen.

Becoming a parent for me is not about posting every detail of my days on Facebook, or thinking about what school my child will go to when, or whom he resembles. I don’t pine over the things I can no longer do as easily as I could without children like shower, write, talk on the phone, or go to the movies. For me, parenthood has been a lot of staring at my son. He is here. He has traveled far and so have we. We have a story like no one else’s. I wouldn’t trade all of the heartache and loss we ever felt conceiving him for anything. The deeper the pain, the deeper the joy.

Right now, our beautiful son is resting on a Boppy with a tan striped t-shirt on. His knees are bent like a grasshopper and his arm is gently draped against his bare belly. His breaths are quick, his legs twitch in a way that if he were standing I know he would be dancing. This is my parenthood. Noticing. Each moment a new word is born.

Our health insurance company called the other day. There is a program they offer to new mom’s. Basically they ask some baseline questions, follow-up after you have the baby to make sure you are not suffering from postpartum depression, and send some books. The woman on the phone kept saying “you” and I kept answering “we”. Finally she caught on. “Is the father going to classes with you?”

“Of course he is,” I answer, “Why wouldn’t he?”

“Oh, that is wonderful! You are so lucky!”

Lucky, really? Is he some sort of card game I’m really good at? This is who he is and why I love him. I wouldn’t be with anyone who wasn’t like this.

It isn’t just our families, or the insurance woman, who assume this baby is exclusively my job, men are pretty invisible in the new baby realm. There are new mom classes but nothing for new dad’s. Excluding men from parenthood sends a message that babies aren’t their business. I don’t know why we can’t just join together and have a new parents class. Sure our issues are different, but our goal is the same: learn to care for a child. I don’t want to keep him at arm’s length just because he is a man, to assume that just because he doesn’t breastfeed means he doesn’t need to learn about the process. We all have a lot to learn. It takes a village, right? Why, when it takes so many, would we exclude the person sitting right next to us?

Parents-to-be can sign up for daily emails from the What to Expect When You’re Expecting website. When Chris and I signed up for this, naturally he clicked the “dad” option and I clicked the “mom” one. Within a couple of weeks he went back into his account and changed it to “mom” because the information he received as the dad was less than basic. I must say, the mom side is not much more encouraging.

Here are a few examples of tidbits of advice we received throughout the pregnancy:

There are good reasons why your body is suddenly emitting sounds (and smells) you’ve previously only heard (and smelled) from your brother or your husband — and definitely not from anyone of the gentler sex.

Image from Sociological Images

In a few weeks I will have a son, who will be exposed to commercials like the ones on the superbowl last night. Ones that show men and women as one dimensional beings, where it is a threat to mans entire being to hold a tube of lipgloss in his pocket for his partner.

It’s pathetic, and sad, this superficial pressure to be masculine. Men were obviously marketing targets last night and I’m not sure why. Are they doing more around the house, or utilizing paternity leave, so we must stop this threat to patriarchy by throwing childish messages out there?

The divide between men and women, husbands and wives, is a tired one. The irony of all this is men are the ones in power – a man is the president, men are predominantly running our banks and fortune 500 companies – yet they are depicted as passive children, unable to make their own choices, threatened by a silly tube of lipgloss. They are treated like powerless puppy dogs, not the powerful human beings with free will that they are.

I don’t think men are victims, but I think this portrayal of them signifies something bigger than selling a muscle car or two.  I think anyone who laughed at those commercials was not really laughing at them, it was more of a nervous laughter. The question is, what are we nervous about? Who are these commercials for?

I don’t feel sorry for my soon to be son. I feel like being exposed to this absurd montage of masculinity will force him to sift through the sand to find the pieces that are genuinely him. He will know more fully who he is because of all the distorted specs he finds in-between his toes and stuck in his hair. He can hold a tube of lipgloss in his pocket and still be a man because really being a man (or woman, for that matter)  transcends all of the pink and blue noise. And that is powerful.

It feels glamorous sometimes. People tell me I’m the most beautiful I’ve ever been. I walk down the grocery store aisle to strangers smiling at me, excitedly exclaiming ‘Congratulations’ as if I’d just won an Oscar, family takes pictures of me doing mundane things like eating or sitting, and I am constantly getting gifts. I feel like a movie star.

Our culture loves to make pregnancy a magical, mystical experience.

This fame has a cost. Just like with Hollywood movie stars, people seem fixated on my exterior. They tell me how huge I am or that I’m not big enough. I get emails on how to create slimming hairstyles in the ninth month. I feel like I’m under some maternity microscope. There is an assumption that the way I look is open for public discussion. If someone asks me how I feel on the inside, and I answer truthfully, it is usually swept under the rug with a “It will all be worth it. You should eat more.” As long as my exterior is up to par, it seems as if the rest of me can go to pot.

I remember picking up a pregnancy book a couple of months ago. “Welcome to the best time of your life,” it boasted. I can’t say that pregnancy is the best time of my life. It has been interesting, and I have grown physically and emotionally, but I don’t feel more beautiful or whole, I just feel like me with a little more life experience under my very public, very big belt.

“I knew my second child was a boy because he kicked me so hard I thought I was going to die.”

“My little girl is so gentle, she never kicks me hard.”

“I don’t envy you having a boy. Boys are so bad they ruin home theatre systems.”

There is no research indicating that boys kick harder than girls and that girls are gentler in utero than boys. This stuff is made up.

There is a lot of made up stuff around pregnancy. Pregnancy is the universal condition. It is universal because, once you announce you are pregnant, everyone around you becomes a doctor. More sentences start with “You’re too…” or “You need to…” or “Don’t…” or “Isn’t it bad to…” than you could ever imagine. Nine times out of ten it is, again, made up.

Why do we fabricate an innocent fetus’s personality and become authorities on ridiculous, unproven wives tales? I think we are so uncomfortable not knowing anything about our child, we make stuff up. As their mother there is an expectation that we know them best, that we are the authority on their lives, yet, in utereo all we really know is sex. Many find the not knowing aggravating so, to alleviate this itch, they become authorities on made up personalities based on a couple of kicks. We succumb to the lure of wives tales because pregnancy is not seen as a medical condition, more like a fairy tale. It is mystical and magical becoming a mother, not a process. However, going through PGD & IVF to have a baby taught me the opposite, that pregnancy is as scientific, as mathematical of an experience as they come.

Once and a while someone will say something nice, or funny to me. Just the other day I heard my favorite pregnant comment yet. A man I casually know looked at my bulging belly and said to me, ”Girl, you eat too many pork chops?” Then he burst into a rap about me having a baby. His friend contributed by busting out in woo hoo’s and uh-huhs.

And rather than feeling on the defensive, or irritated, I felt celebrated.

I have a “different” name and it always made me feel special. Sure, it was annoying when you tell people how to pronounce your name over and over and they ignore you and pronounce it the way they want to anyway, but that is more a show of their character, not mine. I’d rather have that issue than be called “Michael S.” because there are ten Michaels in class and the last initial is the only distinguishing factor. When I was little my mom bought stickers that said “Property of Lisa” and took a sharpie marker and put an “A” in front of the name Lisa and viola, my “Are You There God, It’s Me, Margaret” book and kitten trapper keeper officially became mine. I never felt cheated.

My partner and I want our child’s name to be lyrical and special. Nothing about our family building has been ordinary so why should the naming process be any different? Now that the responsibility of naming another human being sits on our shoulders, I think about all of the possibilities. When I see a beautiful name I think, is that the name of an artist or an author? I don’t think about horrid nicknames angry eight year olds will think up because I don’t operate that way.

In the safe bubble of our supportive and loving home, this is fine. However, once we got out in the world I learned names are a sensitive and hot topic. People like to share their opinions. It doesn’t matter if their opinion is, shall we say, unkind, it is made known if someone does or does not like a name. Sometimes I think they forget it is our child, not theirs, that we are naming. A few months ago we made the mistake of sharing some of the names we were considering and were astounded by the amount of naysayers. Yet if we named him Michael everyone would like it. Do they really like that name or do they like it because everyone else likes it? “You don’t understand, kids are cruel” people constantly tell us. Maybe they were the cruel ones. My theory is: those adults you know who come up with the mean nicknames were the ones doling them out in school. That is why they are eerily quick in coming up with them.

I know there are a couple of mean kids in every class, and if they don’t make fun of his name they’ll make fun of his mannerisms or parents, but we aren’t going to hang our kid out to dry. He will have the necessary tools – comebacks, self-esteem, self-worth and confidence – to know that what they are making fun of him for is really about them, not him. He will ignore them and find friends who aren’t mean. There are plenty of nice kids out there, too.

So we decided to  keep any potential names under lock and key. We will meet the child and announce the name after he is born. I’m finished hearing people’s opinion. It doesn’t matter anyway, just like the personalized license plate indicates, our son isn’t the property of anyone but himself.

Pregnancy is one long Freaky Friday.

Before I got pregnant I was offered wine at parties. Since I got pregnant, this no longer happens. This change is reminiscent of family functions during my pre-21 days. I drank before I was 21 but at family functions I pretended I didn’t and no one offered me bloody mary’s or a single malt. This month I had a couple of glasses of wine but not in front of family because no one offered me any. I feel like I’m in high school all over again.

Then there are the days I feel like I’m five. They are the days when the amount of food on my plate is always a topic of public conversation. “Is that all you are eating? You are eating for two now, you need to eat more.” Even though my doctor says I’m gaining the perfect amount of weight, and in the moment I am full, I seem to not know how much I need or want to eat.

I just want to be offered some wine. Not that I would drink it but I like being able to say no for myself. I want people to lay off the eating. I am too old to be micromanaged. I want people to assume that I am intelligent rather than I don’t know what I am doing. Treating me with kid gloves just makes me feel like a child – invisible. After all we have been through to have a child, all of the planning, tests, bills, and hard lessons, it is safe to assume we have thought about having a kid, a lot, and it is not something we take lightly. I just want a little credit, and to be treated like the adult I am rather than the baby I am carrying. Is that too much to ask?