CW: Pregnancy scans and discussions of assigned sex & gender

The prompt for Day 3 of February’s Love Yourself is ‘Pink’. I personally love pink. When I was pregnant with my son so many people said they could see me with lots of girls because I’m such a pink and glitter kind of girl myself. I didn’t know until he was born that I was having a boy, though I was convinced that was the case through most of my pregnancy. When he was born I had lots of other people think it was a shame I didn’t get a girl, but I was personally delighted to be a boy Mummy.

Yesterday was my 20-week scan with my current pregnancy and this time around Mr F and I decided we would find out the sex of the baby. Unlike my first pregnancy, I was convinced this one was a girl. I was definitely 100%. Baby was determined to give a good flash of what’s between his legs and seconds into the scan I had to hold back the words ‘it’s a boy’ so the sonographer could get to that in her own time once all the definitely more important medical checks were done.

I cannot stress enough that the absolute, most important thing to me is being able to bring my baby home. But having a little boy at home who was eager to know if was getting a brother or sister, and a first time Dad as a partner who was equally curious to know if he was getting a son or daughter, finding out the sex was just an extra way for them to feel closer to the baby.

While I’m not a big subscriber to colours being gendered it’s hard to be an expectant mother and not see the boy/girl, pink/blue divide that exists regardless of whether or not you intend to follow that line of thought yourself. So it did make me chuckle when I saw the Love Yourself prompt because while I am currently very pink, including newly dyed pink hair, my tiny belly human is what some folks would call ‘Team Blue’.

I also know that a lot of this is arbitrary societal norms and I in no way enforce gendered colours or interests in my house. I didn’t with Small Human and I don’t intend to with Tiny Belly Human either, regardless of their assigned sex at birth they will be encouraged to enjoy whatever makes them smile and love whoever makes them happy.