1. I want to know. Plain and simple, speaks for itself. Really it's the only reason I need to give anyone but I'll list the others too.
 |
| I found this picture that really explain how I feel. |
2. Sometimes pregnancy sucks. For me at least. I feel like I had a hangover for the first half and some change (at least with Lyra this was true). If you vomit every day for that long you'll start to get a little depressed and it's fun to find out if you're having a son or daughter. Plus it's stressful, worrying about if everything is ok with your little fetus, you need some perks. Plus the medical procedures related to having the baby happen to me. I get the ultrasonic wand up in my business everytime we need a look at the baby, I have to do the hard work evicting the kid from my uterus, and etc etc. It's not always a walk in the park and I want to have benefits too.
3. Naming the baby. This made bonding with Lyra easier for me. It makes things more real to switch from "it" to "he" or "she." Knowing Lyra was Lyra before I met her face to face made the bonding thing more concrete. Plus I have crafty friends who make cool shit. That's why Lyra has a Dalek and TARDIS themed blanket with her name embroidered on it. Those projects take time and that blanket was ready at birth.
4. Trigger warning here if birth trauma gets to you. My mom was put under general anesthesia for an emergency c-section when she had me. So she didn't get to meet me right away. Should something like this happen to me, I don't want everyone else at the birth finding out about my baby first and I don't want to be all groggy and drugged when I do find out.
5. Trigger warning for miscarriage here. So the last miscarriage was a late first trimester one and we were able to do screening after the fact to find out what the baby was. Well I mean, it was to look for genetic abnormalities but we also found out about her sex chromosomes. Finding out she was a girl after she was already gone was brutal. I want that to be a separate happy moment if at all possible this time around. But it did also help to have closure, knowing. It made it less of an intangible loss. So I would like to know in case of loss. And I want to know as early as I can for that reason.
6. I've done my waiting. 12 years of it. In Azkaban. Not really, but you get my point. I've already been waiting since last April. I still have a long way to go and I'm tired of waiting.
7. I get two days of excitement instead of one. I hear a lot that it's so exciting to be surprised when you give birth. Well it's exciting anytime. There's enough going on the day you have that baby, finding out early just makes a second day amazing as well.
8. And for another counter argument, I hear the "avoid gender stereotyping" arguement. What's a few months when you have to fight that forever anyway? Plus you can still do gender neutral for clothes and nursery if you'd like. Anyone who knows me, knows I work really hard to not gender stereotype and sometimes I feel a little insulted by the arguement that's what you're doing or will do if you find out. I have a theme for this baby's room that doesn't depend on sex or gender. Lyra is just as likely to pick out her green train shirt or her blue shark shirt in the morning as she is the sparkly pink cat shirt or the tulle skirt with the hearts on it. I try really hard to let Lyra figure out Lyra and do whatever she wants, whether that be playing with baby dolls and helping do laundry to playing with race cars and helping Travis in the garage. It's important to me she understand that while I fit into the more traditional gender role right now, that's fluid and it's by choice. So yeah, I think finding out about my baby's chromosomes a couple months early does nothing to force them into any specific stereotype.
So that's my personal thoughts on the matter and why I'll be finding out early on. I should know in 3 weeks. That's so early, how cool is that?
