Does "Gender Neutral" even exist?

When I was pregnant with Greta, we chose not to find out the sex of our baby before she was born. We specifically purchased "gender neutral" clothing and requested the same. We purchased a brown car seat with pretty blue accents and the baby's nursery was decked out in a woodland theme.

We don't regret any of those choices. Since her birth, we have been gifted or lent many "girl" items which we've been happy to receive, and we've even purchased a few ourselves. But by and large, we're very happy that the majority of our baby clothing, decor, and gear is considered gender neutral. We hope to have a second kid someday and it feels so wasteful to not be able to reuse as much as possible. Especially since they'd probably share a room. 

In practice, however, "gender neutral" doesn't seem to be a real thing. People just assume she's a boy. When out for a walk, Greta gets lots of attention, and nearly everyone who talks to her or about her, refers to her as a boy. They do this repeatedly -- it's not just that the "he" slipped out initially, but then they ask to make sure. This really surprised me, as I don't consider many of her "boy" items to be terribly boyish -- especially not the ones where this assumption has come up.  A grey onesie with a giraffe on it? A pair of multi-colored overalls? A yellow hoodie with bunny ears? A cute little monster sleeper? A plain white onesie? Are these things really that manly? 

I find myself sometimes wondering whether I should buy some hairbows to dress her in -- just to make it a little clearer. But then I remember that it's not that I want people to identify her as a girl, it's just that I don't want them to assume she's a boy. 

I think it's perfectly acceptable to say, "How cute! Is your baby a boy or a girl?" I understand that some people might feel awkward about asking, so in that case the reasonable alternative, in my mind, is for someone to say, "How cute! What's your baby's name?" and let the name do the explaining (although in the case of Greta, it sometimes still doesn't read as a girl name to people who aren't familiar with it, as Ben found one time). In most cases, asking the baby's name will get you all the info you need to continue with appropriate pronouns and avoid awkward phrasing, and if it doesn't, you can either coo a bit more and then move along in the conversation (or on your way, in the case of stopping someone in the street), or ask, "I've never heard that name -- is it a boy name or a girl name?" 

But for some reason, few people do this. They tend to just immediately jump to, "What a cute little guy! How old is he?" 

Is it just that parents of girls dress them so girly that even when a baby is dressed in just a plain white onesie, the assumption is that the baby is a boy? Does a lack of clear "girl" indicators mean that a child must be a boy? Do people subconsciously default to boy rather than girl because they think it would be more offensive to mistake a boy for a girl? 

As you may remember, we were in a car accident at the beginning of July which necessitated a new car seat. When trying to purchase a replacement from Amazon on short notice, the only two colors available in a jiffy were black and "Violet Spring" (a pink and purple combo). My first instinct was the black, as it was gender neutral like our old brown one. But it looked SO hot. And the Violet Spring was beautiful. Just also kinda girly. 

It went against our "Gender Neutral for Big Baby Gear that Could Be Saved for a Second Child" goals, but we decided to go for the Violet Spring anyway. Who knew if we'd even have a son down the road, or even a second child at all? And maybe some cool new super-safe carseat would have come out by then and we would be tempted to buy a different one anyway. And it would certainly make it clear that our current child was a girl and maybe we'd buy a replacement seat cover if we had a boy later on (their blue color is GORGEOUS and would have been my first choice if it had been available on short notice). Or maybe we'd just deal with a little gender confusion in the first year of life. We're already dealing with it with Greta . . . 

So we bought the Violet Spring and it arrived and it was beautiful and we're very happy. 

And people still think she's a boy. 

Yes, that's right, on multiple occasions while she has been sitting in the pink and purple seat, someone has referred to her with a male pronoun. 

Greta in her car seat, looking so manly. 

Seriously? Well at least we don't have to worry if we have a boy. He will totally rock this car seat. 

First Cousin!

Greta's first cousin was born yesterday.

Clara Ashley Neary

It all happened so fast! My mom was supposed to be arriving to visit with my sister today, but they changed plans so that she arrived on Thursday. Thursday evening, I chatted with them via FaceTime and my mom said that she'd arrived that afternoon and decided to take a nap straightaway. I told them how excited I was that Michelle would be having a baby so soon, and Michelle said, "Yeah, I dunno . . . maybe, maybe not " and remarked on how she'd been off of work for nearly a week and the baby still hadn't arrived.

That night at 11pm, Greta was crying and fussing. I woke up to go tend to her and saw that I'd received a text message at 10pm saying that Michelle's water had broken. I responded and she said that her contractions had started right away and were 3-4 minutes apart and asked if she should go to the hospital. I told her it was really her discretion -- for some people, 4 minutes apart is the "go signal" to go to the hospital, for others (like me), labor can continue like that for hours still.

I got another text from her saying that she was going to the hospital. Then I went back to sleep.

In the morning, I was wondering how long she'd be in labor and how things were going. When I checked my email, I saw that I had several emails from my mom with titles like, "Grandma and the Girls" and "She has arrived." The earliest of these had a time stamp of 2:13am! At 10pm her water had broken (which was her first sign of labor) and at 2:13am, I was receiving photos of her breastfeeding!

For an entire day, I marveled at how fast her labor had gone and kept telling people about her amazing, 4-hour-from-start-to-finish labor and delivery. And then, just now, I realized that it was actually only 3 hours. Because her water broke at 10pm my time, but it was 11pm her time. And the reason that my mom was able to send photos of my sister at 2:13am, when the baby was born at 2:14am was that the photos must have been sent at 3:13am their time. Which means that her labor went from a little before 11pm to 2:14am her time. About 3 hours and 15 minutes.

Ben and I would be lying if we said we weren't jealous. I think I still have a little PTSD over my own labor experience. And she didn't even have morning sickness! Man, somebody's gotta bottle that whole BFP-to-delivery experience and sell it!

We're insanely happy for them and so excited for our little niece! I can't wait to meet her!

5 Months!

At the time that I am writing this, Greta has recently turned 5 months old. I vacillate back and forth everyday – thinking she’s such a little baby one moment and thinking she looks like a toddler the next. Sometimes she just seems so grown up and other times it feels like nothing is really different. 

As far as specific milestones, not much is different. As I posted earlier, she rolled over for the first time a few weeks ago. But she hasn’t done it since then, so it appears to have been a bit of a fluke. For the most part, her development has seemed to be just a matter of MORE, for lack of a better word. She is more active, more demanding of our attention, more needy when it comes to naps (she doesn’t just sleep anywhere anymore). She’s also more coordinated and more purposeful with her movements – she reaches and grabs for things that she wants, she turns her head to look at computers, phones, TV’s (uh oh). She takes her pacifier out of her mouth and passes it from hand to hand, turning it over and looking at it from all angles.

Her growing interest in being able to interact with people and things more has prompted us to buy a "Go Pod." It's basically a collapsible exersaucer -- without the saucer part, the swivel part or the attached toys...okay, so maybe it's not an exersaucer at all, but just the baby version of a camp chair. Why don't I just show a picture of it? 

Her first experience in a Go Pod -- when we tried it out in a store (the one we actually bought was found via Craigslist).

She also has had a couple bouts of what appears to be teething pain. It will last for an entire day – generalized crankiness, crying, gnawing on her fists, etc. And then the next day it will appear to be gone. I suppose I should be glad that it is short-lived, but since we haven’t seen any actual teeth, we have no idea how long this is going to go on or how it will change as she gets closer to actual teeth. Greta isn’t much of a crier, so it’s particularly stressful when she’s upset.

She’s also been biting me while nursing. Just in these last few days. I could swear she has teeth in there, but when I look, there’s nothing. I’m not even sure if I can describe it as biting. It’s not like a distinct chomp. But she’ll just be nursing as normal and then all of a sudden the shape of her mouth will change and I will feel a horrible, sharp pain and have to pull her off. It feels like the early days of breastfeeding again. Part of me wonders whether her latch is just suddenly getting awful, but it doesn’t seem like that makes sense. I think she’s just experimenting with her mouth (she often makes chewing faces when she watches us while eating) and doesn’t realize that she can’t do that while she’s nursing.

Speaking of her chewing faces while she watches us eat, she has been taking a more active interest in food. She will lean forward and move her jaw in our direction while she watches us. She will follow our food with her eyes, as it moves from plate to mouth. She will reach out to touch food items – like today when she was sitting on my lap, she wanted to hold my glass.

Casey asked me recently whether Greta explores the world by putting things in her mouth. It’s strange, but in a way I kinda don’t think so. Which is strange for a baby, I know. It’s not that she doesn’t put things in her mouth, it’s just not her first instinct. She will usually spend a great deal of time looking at something and touching it first. Then, she will often put it in her mouth, but I guess I interpret it more as a “Hmmm . . . After examining this for a bit, I have decided that it would feel good against my gums. Mayhaps I should try it?” kind of reaction, rather than a, “Hmmmm . . . This is something I’ve never encountered before, what’s it all about? Let’s put it in my mouth and find out!” kind of initial reaction.

"I seem to detect notes of silicone, and just a hint of velour."

Maybe I’m reading way too much into my baby’s motives.

Anyway, the reason I bring it up is that it is an interesting thing to note, as I’m not sure how she’ll react to food next month (wow! That’s soon!) when she turns 6 months old. I had always kinda figured that babies are so used to putting things in their mouth that it would be an obvious choice to make if they were presented with a piece of avocado or banana. But what if she just kinda touches it and doesn’t try to put it in her mouth? How will she figure it out?

I guess I shouldn’t be too worried about it, since she sucks on her hands like crazy. I guess even if she didn’t put the avocado in her mouth immediately, she’d touch it and examine it and then eventually put her hand in her mouth and I guess that’s when she’d discover the deliciousness and (hopefully), get the whole point of this food stuff. Or maybe putting toys in one’s mouth has nothing to do with learning to eat. Maybe it’s a specific learned behavior that she will naturally do, after having watched us put food in our mouths countless times over the course of her life. 

In other news, we found a great deal on a toddler chair at a resale shop. We'd been looking for one ever since we borrowed Walt's when we were in Steven's Point and used it to give Greta her meds.  Much easier than trying to wrangle her into deep corner of the adult-sized couch. She'd been taking her meds like a champ for the last few months, but she's particularly breezy with them while sitting in the chair. The most trouble she gives us is with distraction (turning her head to look at something just as the meds are getting close to her mouth), but most of the time, she knows to open her mouth wide and the whole routine is over very quickly. 

Just lounging. 

In other "Likes and Dislikes," Greta has discovered an admiration for Ben's hair. It's awesome to see her baby belly laughs when Ben tickles her with it, and she also loves reaching out and touching it, running her fingers through it and putting her face in it. 

She thinks this is the best ever. 

Sometimes we question her motives when she offers to perform a lice inspection. 

She likes my hair too and will reach out to grab it or run her fingers over it, but it doesn't offer her quite the same levels of pleasure as Ben's hair. 

Speaking of hair, she's getting quite the little tuft of her own. It's super cute because there's a part of it that sticks up like some kind of adorable Dr. Seuss character. It's hard to capture on film because it's so light in color,  but this was the best I could do. 

Overall, she's just a happy baby!

A little stranger anxiety? Or just an introvert?

On Friday, I took Greta to a social event with some work colleagues. She's a pretty spectacularly cute baby (objectively, of course) and so she was getting passed about quite a bit.

I was surprised at how she reacted to all the people. Usually I think of her as being such a social baby -- always smiling at people, reaching out to touch their faces, "talking" to them, etc. But yesterday she hardly smiled and seemed to focus mostly on sucking on her hand. Each time she was held by a new person, it was the same -- she would be pretty chill and nonchalant about it and then suddenly she'd make this adorable pout, we'd all say, "Awww! You made her pout!" to whomever was holding her (which turned into "Uh oh, you made her pout," by the third or fourth person), and then she'd start wailing. Greta doesn't cry very much, so it was particularly surprising to see this from her. Every time it happened, she'd get passed back to me and I'd calm her down and then she'd seem fine. Eventually, I'd notice someone eyeing the baby again, ask them if they wanted to hold her, and the cycle would continue.

One of my colleagues who works in early childhood development commented that she's a bit young for face discrimination/stranger anxiety. I figured it was probably something other than strange faces -- that she wasn't used to the way that the stranger held her, or something. Still, it was funny to me. I had only seen that adorable pout once before, although that was also when a new person was holding her.

Then yesterday, I was chatting with my sister via FaceTime. I held my phone up so that Greta could see Michelle and Michelle could see Greta. Greta met Michelle when she was just one month old -- so quite awhile ago at this point -- and then saw her again when she was about three months old. She's now almost five months old and I think this may have been her first FaceTime with Michelle since our last visit. Greta initially looked at Michelle, stared at her quizzically, "talked" to her, and seemed content and fine. All of a sudden, she started making the funny pout again! And crying! It was so bizarre! Even the image of a (relatively) strange person made her pout!

I've gotten so used to her being around the same people so often. When I think about it, she's really only around me, Ben, Ben's parents, Casey and Asher. She's usually so social with those people that I assume she's an extroverted sort of baby who hasn't reached the point of stranger anxiety yet.  But maybe these are the first signs? I will have to be on the lookout for the adorable stranger-danger pout in the future.