Over the last 23 weeks I have discovered that people say strange things to pregnant women.
Some people tell me they hope I have a particular gender baby, as though whatever spurious and offensive reasons they have for rejecting one child and adoring another will be of any interest or relevance to me.
Then there are the people who gleefully recount horrific tales of episiotomies and errant nipples and five day long labours only to pat me reassuringly on the arm and tell me that everything will be okay.
Most notably, however, are the people who think it’s okay to disagree with whatever parenting decisions my partner and I have already made, because, you know, just you wait and see.
Just I wait and see what? Just I wait and see what kind of shit-tonne fuck-truck is going to hit me when I first hold my child? Just I wait and see that it’s not all sepia rocking chair pictures and cute little spit-bubbles? The thing is, I’m not an idiot. If there is one thing I know for certain right now it’s that I haven’t got even got half a lepton of clue what’s about to happen, and whatever it is that does happen is not going to be easy.
I also know that no matter how life-changing-mind-blowing-yadda-yadda the whole experience is going to be, it is not going to magically make Robot Husband and I suddenly undergo radical personality alterations. Transformative experiences don’t tend to do that, they just make you more of who you already are.
There is a very clear point to what we, as parents, are committed to doing. We spend a lot of time discussing these things. Not the nuances of weaning and potty training because God knows (or cares) how that all works and no doubt it all figures itself out in the end, but the wider philosophy of helping a new tiny human grow into a happy, productive, compassionate, thoughtful bigger human.
So we say things that we’ve discussed. We say, for example, that if we have a girl she will understand that there are more colours in the world than just pink and have more career aspirations than princess. If we have a boy, he is more than welcome to be a pink princess if he so desires. It’s important to us that our child gets to see how brilliant the world is and how many incredible opportunities there are to take without being foisted into a narrow little box of prescriptive roles based on the lumbering whims of unimaginative and radically outdated ideologues.
We say this because we are trying, politely, to let people know thank you very much for the generous gifts and yes you will be involved in our child’s life but please go easy on the lace and frills, or please go easy on the guns and tanks, or please be considerate of our lifestyle and our choices which may or may not be different to yours.
And then someone shakes their head and says “just you wait and see” as though their experience is the essential experience and nothing else could possibly be otherwise, as though whatever they have done to get to this point is so infinitely superior to anything I am about to do or have thought about doing that I should just pack it all in and hand over my child right now.
How about going easy on the passive aggressive put-downs, laying off the patronising attitude and having an adult conversation about genuine lessons that I can learn from you? So you said one thing and changed your mind later. Why? Did it matter in the end? Do you wish you’d stuck it out? I’d really like to know. Knowing might actually help. Waiting and seeing will not.
Anyway, what are we waiting to see? That pink things will creep into the house without us noticing? Of course they will. I already have a hot pink baby-gro in the drawer and, shocker, if we have a boy he’ll be wearing it too. That there’ll be tantrums because our child wants something we’re not prepared to give? Of course there will. I’m not becoming a parent because I want a new best friend. Sure, I want my child to love me, but s/he won’t always like me. “Just you wait and see” = “You’re too stupid to have thought of any of this”. Look! I thought of it! I’m not stupid after all!
We say that we don’t want smokers coming near our baby, or holding our baby within an hour of having a cigarette, or breathing their foetid smokers’ breath all over our baby. We say that because all the guidelines from all the clever people in white coats say to do exactly that. They have no vested interest in lying or scaremongering. We have a very large vested interest in taking their advice. Thanks people in white coats for the free advice!
So again we’re told to just wait and see, this time because it’s overcautious and hysterical. Err. Yes. That’s our job. You know what else our job is? Making decisions for our child, whether the wait and seers like it or not. And we’re going to make decisions all the time, every day, every week, every month, until our child can start making decisions for itself and sometimes the decisions we make will be right and sometimes they’ll be wrong and sometimes we’ll change our mind and sometimes we’ll stick to our guns. You want to disagree? Fine, but you don’t get to hang out with my kid. Just you wait and see.