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I have thought a lot about whether to write about this or not, and if so, how to go about it sensitively.  I think for so many women who have had the kind of birth experiences I have, we really do fall in love with the birth event itself.  And I tend towards hyper-analysis, in almost every area of my life, birth being no exception.  I can’t watch birth videos without assessing the appropriateness of the caregiving, and I welcome that kind of (respectful) analysis of the birth footage I have shared.

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I love having a big family, and while our plan is to wait a couple of years before having another baby, I do want another baby! I am also still interested in making each subsequent birth better: freer, more autonomous, more connected.  This isn’t to say that I don’t acknowledge and adore the perfection of all my babies’ births.

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And I also have to re-iterate just how much I *adore* Lee, and how grateful I am for his presence during Felix’s birth, and also my friend Katie who was there to film and hang out with the kids, and who was just awesome.

But, yes.  Anyway.  This is a roundabout way of getting to my point, which is that I have, in the past few months, spoken to Lee about…

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It’s a boy!!!

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If any of you have watched Felix’s birth, (and I know most people come to this site from youtube), you might have noticed that I gave birth to Felix on my hands and knees (almost falling off the bed), and that as soon as he popped out, Lee, in a flurry of beautiful emotion, cried, “It’s a boy!”, and then Katie reiterated, “It’s a boy!”.

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So, I found out that I had given birth to a boy, with my head over the side of the bed, before I had even seen my baby.

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I want to be clear, too, on the fact that I do not have ultrasounds, and I specifically have a very personal philosophical aversion to finding out the sex of the baby before birth.  I have no judgments towards others on the topic–It really is none of my business, and I welcome everyone to do what they want.  But I couldn’t imagine it, myself.  It would be, for me, an affront, and a bit of a violation of my own personal ethical code.  I can’t relate to naming a baby prior to birth.  I just love the secret, quiet dark.  The intimacy of not knowing.  It is important to me.

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And I actually really struggled with discussing this with Lee, because it was immediately evident to me–and still is, every time I watch our video–that there was no thought, when Lee called out, just love and excitement and relief.

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And when I first brought this up with my sweet, wonderful husband, I was careful to present my idea uncritically, and lovingly.  And I was/am in no way angry with Lee…just to be clear.

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But in an abstract way, I was angry!  Because I did the work, and I cried, and my body opened, and I want to be able to make the discovery of my baby’s sex, and I felt like that had been taken from me.

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I have also been realizing that the baby’s sex might not be the first thing that a mother, in her most primal state, might look for.  And I have noticed that hearing Felix’s boyness announced, jolted me out of that primal state, to a degree.  I didn’t care, at that particular moment, whether he was a boy or a girl, I needed to hold, touch, smell, examine my child.  So in a way, the fact of his sex was forced on me, before I was ready to take that in.

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Lee was totally receptive and understanding of this little issue.  And he has promised, in the future, to stay quiet.  In addition to the multitude of excitements and joys to do with pregnancy, birth and babies, I am, particularly, looking forward to meeting my next child inside the sacred bubble of birth, held by whomever happens to be there.

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It really is so important for us women to be extremely clear on what we need from those around us.