NETA (time limit) - here in SC there’s a bill in the legislature right now outlawing abortion after 20 weeks. I would have been against such a bill before I got pregnant, knowing that 20 weeks is when a lot of people find out about major anomalies and that abortions after 20 weeks aren’t common anyway, but now that I’m here myself I want to rip out the sponsor’s spine and shit down his neck. At this point? Seriously? I’m still four weeks away from 20 and I can’t imagine anybody who’s gotten this far who would decide to abort now without a reason that’s pretty goddamned important to them. I suppose there must be some people just finding out, because they’re in denial or in very hard positions or very overweight with irregular periods or something. And there must be some people who have been unable to get an abortion until now because of, generally, legal barriers. Or financial ones. All of which, frankly, would for many people be a perfectly compelling reason to abort anyway. But the majority of American pregnant women at this point, and definitely by 20 weeks, would have seen at least two ultrasounds, been showing for a while, gone through all the morning sickness, probably felt it move - if you were going to abort this fetus you probably would have done it before now. If you are doing it now, I trust you enough to figure you know what you’re doing. God, it makes me so angry that those fuckers down the road in the State House don’t.
Your child is negative five months old and has already disappointed you, and that’s actually kind of a good thing. He’s going to subvert your expectations and tear down your little air castles approximately 9 billion times over the course of his life, and the first time will be the hardest one. Best off to go on and get that one out of the way early, really.
On the baby clothes front, our neighbor has all sorts of adorable things with tigers and gators and sharks and such on them. I’ll ask them for shopping recommendations for you. And there are soooo many precious crochet patterns on Ravelry and Craftsy that would be boy appropriate. Said neighbors are wanting me to make their sprout some socks that look like a shark is eating his feet.
Zsofia - You’re not having a boy, you’re having your boy. That makes all the difference.
(I’m actually remind of hte Murphy Brown ep when she finds out Avery is a boy. She’s verklempt, having assumes she’d be having a girl. “Now who can I teach to change the oil in the car??”, she says.)
StG
Aw, yeah. As a mother of two who can be damn obnoxious when they feel like it, I was in puddles at that, and the mama calling for her baby that was moved to another park. 
But your description was so apt, especially about the crusty dude, that I’m also laughing.
I’m really embarrassed to admit that that is totally part of it - we weren’t going to repaint, and we were going to go with either dinosaurs or rocket ships in the nursery, and I was looking forward to somebody being a dick about our little girl in her blue rocket ship nursery and now, sigh, it’s just expected. I suppose I’ll have to go buy some pink paint now.
Oh, yes. This was exactly me. I really hadn’t been imagining either, or rather, I’d been imagining both, but when I found out it was going to be a boy, there was a brief moment of “…Oh. Huh.” But after that, I was fine with it. Until that evening when I told my husband. He was thrilled, but he added, “Too bad, though, because I just thought of the perfect girl’s name today!” And he told me, and it was the perfect name, and suddenly, I could clearly envision the daughter that would never be. And that bummed me out for a little while.
But then I thought about it - specifically about all the “girl stuff” of which I have such hard-earned knowledge that I wouldn’t get to pass on. And I thought, “Hang on! Isn’t a huge part of the problem that so many men don’t understand what women experience? Or think of them as somehow less than men? Well, here’s your chance to teach at least one guy that girls are people, too, and they’re just as awesome as boys.” And then I thought about the kinds of things you’re thinking about - how boys are in many ways just as pigeonholed as girls - and just like you, I was all enraged about gender-specific clothing.
LOL. Yes. And the toys; don’t get me started on the toys. But I found there’s plenty of options if you look. Animal themes are perfect for when they’re little - and I firmly believe there should be a law that all babies must wear animal ears at all times. Now that he’s older, we have lots of monsters and dinosaurs as Antigen suggested, and also robots, trains, surfer stuff, music/rock star stuff, Disney, Sesame Street, Muppets, Snoopy, Curious George, and on and on. And lots of solids and stripes. As for toys, he mostly plays with the same stuff I loved as a kid: Legos, blocks, Tinkertoys, Lincoln Logs, Playdoh (SO much Playdoh), art supplies, and a zooful of stuffed animals. And he got about five different toy tool kits for his last birthday, which he also enjoys.
And farts. Don’t forget the farts.
Yep, yep, yep. First, my kid as a baby was nothing like I’d imagined. He didn’t even look like I’d imagined, and that was extremely weird. I kind of felt like, “Who’s this kid? Where’s Lumpy? (my in utero nickname for him)” Nothing was quite as I had expected it. And second, I was shocked at how soon I started seeing little glimmers of personality in my son. Not just moods and habits, but the sense of “OMG, there’s a real little person in there!” And at 3 1/2, his personality has certainly broadened and deepened, but he hasn’t really changed. He’s a different person than I imagined, but he’s an awesome person.
He does a LOT of typical “boy” stuff, but he also does “girl” stuff, too. Two of his best friends are girls, in fact. He loves Mickey Mouse, but also Minnie (especially her “Bow-tique” cartoons). He loves to cook us delicious dinners in his play kitchen. He takes great pride in being a good “daddy” to all his stuffed animals. (Many of those are also girls, by the way, because one day I noticed that I reflexively called them all “he” unless they had a bow, and realized that was dumb; naked teddy bears should not default to male. And he follows my lead on what to call them, so some of them are now “she”. Although the other day, he did say, “I want Big Bear to be a boy like me.” So it’s not like he’s confused.) And he begged for nail polish, so I bought him a rainbow of colors. We did explain to him that it’s fine for him to paint his nails, but most of the time, it’s only girls who do that. He just nodded blankly like, “…oookay? So noted.” And we’re lucky that the parents of his friends also seem to be unafraid of their sons catching Teh Gay via exposure to sparkles or wearing a necklace or being hugged by a fellow 3-year-old boy.
Again, I totally know what you mean. Even our cat is male, so I felt like the odd woman out for quite a while, and still do, sometimes. But it turns out there are so many ways in which my kid takes after me, that honestly, I’d say his personality is a lot more like me than my husband (though I’m sure my husband would say the opposite). On the other hand, my husband is Asian and I’m white, so we both assumed our kid would look Asian, and surprise! He really doesn’t, at all. And I think - though he’s never said it - that my husband felt a tiny bit disappointed that he wasn’t “like” him in this way. But I know that for both of us, the bottom line is that whatever he’s like, he’s ours. He’s our family. He’s half me and half my husband, and more like us than anyone else in the world.
This is slightly incorrect. With a son you have to worry about every uterus out there. A daughter can only get knocked up once a year, tops. A son could be out there making you grandbabies 24/7/365.
That didn’t help, did it?
ANYway… let me sum up by saying:
…and also…
…and of course…
…and because it bears repeating…
ANIMAL EARS.
I have two girls. I also had huge and heartbreaking fertility issues to get both of them. I love my girls but I would have gladly taken two boys instead the girls I preferred had I been allowed the luck of skipping the infertility agony.
I did make the cutest little monkey hats for last year’s work craft fair. Those little fuckers SOLD, too. (And my minion hats and owl hats. Scarves for dogs, kind of a bust.)
Really confuse 'em, and go with a Rainbow Dash theme. (Sky blue female pony jock with rainbow hair.)
I’m sensing a disturbing trend here.
If it makes you feel any better, my 4-year-old nephew loves dressing up in girls clothing and even wanted a birthday party with a Disney Princess AND Darth Vader theme (the decorations for that party looked hilarious together). I don’t expect that to last, but his mother loves it because she only has boys.
I don’t have kids, but personally I’d take a smelly and dirty boy over a moody and rebellious teenage girl any day.
Posting without reading all the replies:
My wife was visibly deflated to get her ultrasound and learn she was having a boy. She had hoped for a girl and had a name picked out, envisioned a relationship like she had with her mother and the rest of it. She also knew that this would be her first and last baby.
She got past it fairly quickly and I’m sure wouldn’t trade our little monster for the world but I think it’s perfectly normal and natural to have an image built up in your mind and feel disappointed when it doesn’t come through.
ALL OF THIS.
I would have aborted my last pregnancy at around 18 weeks for chromosomal abnormalities if I hadn’t miscarried at 16 (probably for the same reason). The whole experience was the most heartbreaking thing that’s ever happened to me (okay, yeah, I’ve had a good life, but still), and if I had voluntarily aborted it would have been twice as bad, and that’s in a state where abortion is legal up to 24 weeks. It makes me SO ANGRY that people want to make this process even harder than it already is.
I think I needed to hear that, too. Thanks. Thanks to everyone chiming in on this thread, actually. Makes me feel more normal, less guilty, and more ready to meet my little guy and love him for all he may ever be. I want to hug all of you, but that might be the hormones talking. 
Zsofia, your little dude is going to be super awesome and I can’t wait for all your new-Mommy posts about how wonderful he is. And we’ll be wanting pictures of him in crocheted animal-ear hats, please. Lots and lots of animal hats. And those shark socks.
Is 4 months long enough to learn to crochet? Because I think maybe I need to learn to make animal-ear hats.
Honey, I could teach you to do it in an hour. Ain’t no thing.
Believe me, my wife wanted a girl to give her Madam Alexander dolls to and go shopping with. She did NOT want the hyperactive outdoorsman she got. She never imagined she’d ever willingly have live snakes, rats, frogs, toads, lizards and crawdads in her dining room.
But she adores our son anyway and wouldn’t change a thing
Hey there. I’m so sorry to hear about this. My heart ached for you when I saw your thread about Down’s Syndrome parenting, because that’s just such an agonizing situation, no matter what the outcome. I totally agree; I’ve always been staunchly pro-choice, and being intentionally pregnant only strengthened my conviction. It’s hard enough to have to make that choice when you didn’t want a child to begin with. But when that child was hoped for, planned for, ready to be welcomed into the world? NO ONE who has to make that choice is taking it lightly.
There’s a group of protesters I drive by almost every day, who stand by the road and wave giant photos of bloody fetuses. When I was pregnant, I thought about organizing a group of really hugely pregnant women to counter-protest. But it occurred to me that there was a non-negligible chance that might incite violence, and it didn’t seem smart to endanger my or my baby’s well-being.
Yay! I’m so excited for all of you. Your kids are going to be so awesome*, I swear.
YES. Yes you do.
Heh, I was all like, “Aw, man; he’s not going to give a shit about Anne of Green Gables!” But I’m the one who loves the creepy crawlies, so I’ve got that going for me.
*At times.
When my wife was pregnant with our child, I really wanted a girl. When the ultrasound showed that he was a boy, I was disappointed. Well, he is now four years old, and he has turned out to be the most delightful little kid. He is, naturally, his own unique person, who I wouldn’t trade for anything in the world.
By the way, boys DO read. At least some do.
My daughter doesn’t give a shit about Anne of Green Gables. Or Little House on the Prairie. Or…and this one is really, really hard for me…anything by Tamora Pierce. She LOVES to read, but she’s not interested in a single book that I loved as a girl.
Actually, those kinds of cases actually do make up a significant number of later abortions.
http://www.ajog.org/article/S0002-9378(08)02214-X/fulltext#sec5
And here are the reasons from the Alan Guttmacher Institute’s survey of why women aborted at later than 16 weeks (from 1987, but including because it broke down the reasons and the above cite from 2009 seems to indicate that not much has changed) :
I think there are a lot of women, ** especially young women** (who are the ones most vulnerable to things like not recognizing they are pregnant or being afraid to tell anyone until late in the pregnancy), who do not appreciate how well developed a 16+ week old fetus is - especially if they feel like an abortion is the only option and therefore are actively trying not to look at anything that might change their mind (such as ultrasounds).
If you can look at a 16 week old fetus and think that you would not abort it unless it was for dire reasons, why is it so hard to believe that a pro-lifer can look at a 16 week old fetus and sincerely see it as a human life who deserves to be protected from harm?
And let’s not forget that sometimes parents do kill their children after birth. In some countries, little girls are abandoned at birth just for being girls even today. Since you’re in SC, I’m sure you have heard of Susan Smith. Does your logic apply to those situations too? “You’d have to have a pretty goddamned important reason to kill a 1 year old and 3 year old, so who am I to say she did anything wrong?”
And yes, I realize I am a monster for disagreeing with the pregnant lady in her own thread. However, I was pretty appalled that this thread turned into an apologia for late term abortion.