Free How Not to Calm a Child on a Plane by Johanna Stein

can’t stand the idea of someone possessing information about me to which I am not privy. Though it does give me the opportunity to use the word privy , it generally feels to me like the first step of a blackmail plot. And while I’m certain that I could have kept the secret from the husband if he’d insisted on waiting, there’s no way I’d have beenable to keep from taunting him mercilessly and holding that knowledge over his head, which I’m guessing is probably not the optimal environment in which to bring a child into the world.
    Fortunately, he felt the same way I did; neither of us could understand why anyone would need to save the surprise for the delivery room. Aren’t there enough surprises, between “Guess how much college is going to cost in eighteen years?” to “Whoa, Nelly! I think I just gave birth to a Conehead.” But, as I like to say, each to his own. *
    After I lay down on the examination table, Dr. V. Jay lathered up my pooch-y tummy with KY Jelly and began peering through my guts.
    Swooping the ultrasound paddle over my belly as though it were an air-hockey table—a flabby, bloated air-hockey table—the doc directed our attention to the monitor, on which he pointed out the baby’s head and facial features, the spine, and some tendrils that would apparently become arms and legs, all of which looked more like a thermal weather map than a human to me. Then, with all the drama of a game-show host, he said, “Let me ask you one more time: are you sure you want to know the sex of this baby?”
    The husband and I looked at each other.
    â€œUh, yeah,” I said.
    â€œSo you do want me to tell you,” said the doctor.
    â€œYes,” I said.
    â€œYou’re sure about that?” he asked again.
    â€œYes!” I said, feeling agitated and certain that my fear of blackmail plots was about to be validated; either that or we were about to win the Showcase Showdown.
    The doctor pointed to the low-pressure front on the ultrasound screen and said, “There’s one lip, and there’s the other lip. It’s a girl!” My husband looked at me, confused, and asked, “He can tell that from her face”? To which I responded quietly, “I don’t think he’s talking about the lips up top.” *
    Once we’d both taken a moment to get past the doctor’s strangely porn-y choice of words, the husband pumped a fist in the air and shouted, “YES!”
    Me, not so much.

    The husband was confused by my lukewarm, less-than-overjoyed response to the news that we were having a girl.
    Certainly, a big chunk of my disappointment was the loss of possibility. I’ve always loved those life moments of infinite potential—like when you get something in the mail from the gas company and your first thought is “Maybe there’s a check for five thousand dollars in there!” followed by the next thought, “Or maybe it’s awkward nude photos of me taken from inside our bathroom heating vent.” It’s why it takes me foreverto choose from a list of thirty-nine flavors and why I die just a little after saying, “I’ll have the chocolate.” There’s something so delicious about that sweet spot of unlimited possibility. And learning that we were having a girl meant closing the door on a lifetime of unique, mom-to-a-boy experiences that I wouldn’t get to savor, like being my son’s first “special lady” and the privilege of making life for every subsequent “special lady” in my son’s life a living hell.
    I’d assumed we were having a boy, for a number of very good reasons. There aren’t many females in our lineages; I have two brothers, and my husband has one brother. Also, my friend Pete (who also has a brother) had dangled his wife’s wedding ring over my belly during a backyard kegger, and when the ring swung back and forth in a