“Do you know what you’re having yet?”

It doesn’t matter if it’s a family member, close friend or the checkout lady at the grocery store; it’s the inevitable question that always follows once people hear that you are expecting a child. “No, we’re not finding out. As long as it’s healthy we don’t care either way.”

Then comes the look of, “Yah, right.”

But for us it’s true. And I’m sure if you ask any parent that has ever lost a child, they would agree. There is no worse feeling in the world than going to an ultra sound and having the Dr. say, “There’s no heartbeat.” I realize that it was natures way of saying that they embryo was unhealthy and it made the difficult decision for us of terminating the pregnancy. It still doesn’t make it any easier.

An acquaintance of mine had his twins born a few months premature and one of them unfortunately did not make it.

A friend of mine lost her child, days before her due date, because its umbilical chord had gotten tangled up and knotted in utero. She had to still go through a ten hour labor to give birth to a child that she would never get a chance to see it take it’s first steps, to fall in love, to laugh and cry.

One of my cousin’s and his wife had their baby born four months premature and everyday was a struggle for it to cling to life.

Notice, in the three stories above, I never revealed any of the child’s sexes? Does that make any of them less sad?

My wife and I already have a daughter, fortunately a very healthy one, with a very healthy temper to boot. We are expecting our second child in October and every time we hear from the Dr. that everything looks good, I breathe a silent sigh of relief to myself. Earlier during the pregnancy, we had to have some extra test done because the Dr.’s said that my wife’s blood test came back with things indicating that the baby might have downs syndrome. It’s great that today’s technology can give parents a heads up to something of this magnitude so that they can properly prepare both mentally and emotionally for any added challenges to the already difficult job of being a parent. Anyone with a child can attest, raising a child is hard, but raising a child with any sort of health issues makes it even harder. This type of information is important to me. I would take the info of my child being healthy over the info of its gender any day.

There are so few real pleasant surprises in life these days, I think waiting for the day that you’re your child arrives in your life and in your family to find out if you have a boy or a girl is one of the last true surprises. It’s always been funny to me how differently people act toward the baby, while it’s still in it’s mommy’s belly after they find out what it is. It will have a whole lifetime to live up to and to be categorized, like a book in a library, to it’s expected gender role, why not give it 9 months to just be a baby? Why the big hurry? But to some, the really macho guy who NEEDS to have a son because, “only a man can make a man!” (are we still cavemen?) or the people who are control freaks, I guess it is important. Nothing against my control freak friends, you’re fun to watch.

And there are some out there, you know who you are, that really do want a boy or a girl but feel that it’s taboo to admit to it. I can completely understand that if you already have a child and you only plan on having two, that it would be nice to be able to experience the parenting trials and tribulations, that one day become specific for each gender.

To me, there was no feeling like assisting in bringing my child into this world, raising them high (like in ROOTS or The Lion King), and announcing to the world that I have a daughter.

A beautiful and healthy daughter.

I AM The Hollywood Clown