Lindsay Waits's blog

I’ll admit it. I was thinking pink for a while. I had a pink nursery all picked out, complete with an over-the-top, pricey crib and designer sheets. I just knew I’d be dressing this child in ruffles and lace.

But about two days prior to my ultrasound, I started panicking. I still loved the idea of a girl, but I got just a bit freaked out when I thought about how difficult it must have been to raise me – let’s face it…sometimes we girls just aren’t easy to deal with. And Lord knows I deserve whatever payback I get.

This is the last blog I’ll write as mommy-to-be of a Child of Undetermined Gender. Tomorrow, I’ll be shopping for gender-appropriate nursery gear after our ultrasound.

Thank goodness for grandparents who want to spend money. Just kidding, grandparents. Don’t stop reading now.

In all honesty, while I cannot WAIT to find out if this little turnip (again, who comes UP with these analogies?) is pink or blue, I’m also just a tiny bit sad.

It seems that most moms are born with some type of inherent knowledge to pass along to their children…how to play the piano or throw the perfect pitch. Maybe even how to drive a car. I don’t really qualify for any of the above, but I have been thinking really hard about what in the world I am already 100% sure that I know how to teach my apple-sized baby.

I haven’t come up with a huge list, but I do know this: my baby is going to know its way around a kitchen.

Since I began teaching college courses, I’ve had one rule that some other instructors found a bit odd. I don’t allow students to “friend” me on Facebook.

Call me old-fashioned, but for me, Facebook is like a big ‘ole window into my living room…a place I want to keep far, far away from student interaction.

This semester, I caved, thinking I could just adjust my privacy settings and be done with it. I very quickly discovered that my aversion to “friending” students was less about my privacy, more about the protection of my own feelings.

If y’all wanna chalk this one up to hormones, go ahead…but in the interest of safety, please do so behind my back.

So as the second trimester progresses (Baby is the size of a LEMON now), I’m learning more and more about the tangled web of pregnancy expectations that has been woven by generations and generations of bumpalicious pregos before me:

“MY wife never even showed until the 8th month.”

“I ran a marathon at 9 months!”

“Look at her – she’s ALREADY lost the pregnancy weight!”

“My daughter was winning tennis tournaments all the way through her third trimester!”

I had really good intentions to blog while I was on my Mexico babymoon (read: the last trip a couple takes alone together for quite a while without baby or without at least worrying about how terribly the grandparents are spoiling baby while Mom and Dad are gone).

I planned on waking up, checking out the sunset, having some decaf, then keeping you readers updated on how it was going.

Ha ha.

Back to the real world now, I just have to update you all on an epiphany I had while preparing for this trip.

Traveling with a baby isn’t easy.

At no time in my life have I been bombarded with more “old wives’ tales” than I am now.

“If you crave pickles, it’s a boy; sweets, it’s a girl.”
“If you have heartburn, the baby will have a lot of hair.”
“If you drink coffee, the baby will have brown birthmarks.”

So I can’t help but wonder whatever happened to this oldie but goodie: “You are what you eat.”

I think it’s absolutely true when it comes to growing a baby – after all, I’m the only nutrient, calorie, and blueberry provider for my child right now.

This summer, the hubs, my parents, and I took off to the Gulf Coast for our annual week ‘o sun, surf, and seafood.

Typically, I’m a bundle of laughs at the beach – completely relaxed, carefree, and easy-breezy.

On this particular trip, I was still sorta like that, but I seemed to have inherited some obnoxious trait that I never thought I would have.

I stopped blogging for a bit.

Not because I was busy or lazy or had other plans to catch up on every episode of “Modern Family” that’s aired so far. All true, but not the reasons for my hiatus.

I had a little scare. Maybe even a big scare. After a more-stressful-than-what-is-considered-normal Christmas, my body informed me that I had overstepped my boundaries. The baby was in a bit of trouble.

My Facebook status today: “This is probably the very first year since I was 12 years old that I am not making a NY resolution to lose 10 pounds. Thank you pregnancy!!!! (And thank you stretch pants).”

It was one of those updates that you almost immediately regret typing (and not just because I lied…I think I was actually 11 when I started dieting). I mean, did I really need to inform everyone in the metropolis that is Facebook that I have been a yo-yo dieter since I was a child?