Playing God

It’s been interesting, to me, to read message boards with entries written by people who are very concerned about their unborn baby being a particular sex. Here is a very typical example of statements made on these message boards:

“Now that we're planning for #2, I'm getting so scared that if it's another boy I'll be really disappointed and won't really love him as much. Yeah, it'll be cool to have two brothers--for them. But I want a daughter! 3 kids isn't an option so this is the last chance.”

One well-meaning person offered a solution to parents desiring a certain gender: Try Microsort, to sort the father’s sperm, before it’s placed in mommy’s uterus. It’s the most accurate way to ensure (it’s 73-88% successful) you’ll get the sex you want and it’s only $3-4K per attempt.

While I can understand a person wanting (even strongly wanting) their baby to be a certain sex, it just seems so funny to me that such a big deal is made over it. I think it’s human nature to want to control every area of our lives. And this is just one of those areas in life that we know we ultimately can’t control. (Even if a couple uses Microsort, it’s not completely guaranteed they’ll get what they want.)

I think God probably sits in heaven and laughs at all of our attempts to control everything. After all, there’s nothing that we can absolutely control. We can make all the “right” decisions, but that doesn’t guarantee we’ll get the results we expect. We can eat only healthy food – at every blasted meal – and we still might die of a heart attack at age forty. We can plan our retirement accounts to perfection and we still might lose it all in a bad investment. And then there’s planning the gender of your child . . . you might wish, and wish, and wish for a girl – and use Microsort to your heart’s content – but you still might get a boy. And, ultimately, God knows what’s best. So, right now – at this very moment, I am exhaling a BIG sigh of relief that He is in control of all things . . . and I am not. And, if you’re like me, there are many times in life when you didn’t get what you wished for and, later, in retrospect, you said, “Thank you Lord, for not giving me what I thought I wanted.”

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Speaking of gender, today we had our 20 week ultrasound (only I didn’t schedule it in time so we’re actually at 22 weeks!) and we had the option of finding out the gender. I must confess that it was extremely difficult for me to keep my mouth shut and not ask the technician to tell me. In fact, I was such a “big girl,” because the first thing I told the technician was that we do not want to know the gender (so she wouldn’t accidentally say something to reveal it). Because we told her this at the outset, she whizzed past the child’s butt every time she saw it and never fully brought it into focus. Kevin surmised, from what we briefly saw of it, that we’re having a little girl because he didn’t “see” anything to indicate otherwise. But that’s just amateur speculation, of course.

It was incredible to see the ultrasound images. I know some women don’t like the idea of having ultrasounds because they think it’s “invasive.” (At least I think that’s their argument.) I personally think women who choose not to have ultrasounds are missing out on a very memorable and completely amazing experience. And from what I’ve read, babies can’t hear ultrasounds because the pitch is higher than the human ear can detect. Although, the baby did move around a lot today. But that was probably due to the fact that I drank two shots of espresso right before I went in so the baby would be more active on the monitor. I told Kevin that, hopefully, this is not an indication of a trend in parent-centered childrearing (i.e., it’s all about us, “Move baby, move! We want to see you move!”).