When I was pregnant with my first child, I agonized over my decision to find out the sex. I knew that anatomy does not indicate gender identity, but I was also impatient, ready for some forecast, however unreliable, of what the future might hold for me as a mother. Having grown up as a girl in America, I knew what gendered wars I might be up against if I were to have a daughter. I wanted to prepare myself for the fight. At my second-trimester ultrasound, I decided to find out.
But then things got weird. Nancy, the bubbly sonogram technician, projected the inside of me on a screen that covered an entire wall, dimming the lights, like we were in a movie theater. She kept saying, “That’s a cute baby!” I had no idea what she was looking at as she furiously clicked and numbered and measured different parts of the fuzzy gray blob on the screen. With much excitement, she proclaimed the fetus was a girl. She then printed a three-foot ream of black-and-white pictures, each with an unidentifiable area circled, which she folded and tucked into a white envelope with gold writing that reminded me, again, It’s a Girl!
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