Last week during prenatal yoga we went around the room and had an even count: two expecting boys, two expecting girls, and two expecting surprises. This is the only situation where I've seen neutrality well received.

Another example, my BFF makes these incredible hand-made baby shoes and sometimes I accompany her to markets. People coo at the shoes and offer their praise and disbelief that such shoes even exist. Sometimes they confess they don't know anyone who is expecting, and sometimes they have a specific baby in mind. And sometimes, we get the vicious "My sister/co-worker/postal worker won't tell me what she's having?! She wants it to be a surprise?! Doesn't she know that the suspense is killing me???"

I understand that in the context of baby shoes, gender might be slightly relevant (although there are always numerous gender neutral options on the table). However, outside of this I wonder how and why we get so tied to the gender of the baby.

Tips for Mamas-to-be
Stand your ground. Unless you are the Queen of England, the monarchy does not rest on the gender of your offspring. Feel free to point this out.
Be kind to your fellow pregnant mamas who make a different choice. Some women desperately want to know, and that is their business. In the world of parenting, everyone is different, so this is a great practice point.
Meet your partner halfway. If your partner wants to know, s/he should get to speak their mind. Understand that they might be a little jealous that you get to make so many executive decisions. If you're in a partnership, be a good partner.


Tips for Your Friends on a Gender Bender
Focus on how you will treat the baby, regardless of gender. What is the same? 99% of the baby's needs will be identical regardless of gender, so focus on gender neutral or useful gifts that don't rely on gender, like silverware, car seats, and college funds.
Imagine all the things you will want to do with the new baby. Teach them to fish? Catch a football? Bake cakes? Pee outside? Maybe you think there is a gender bias in these activities, and you want plenty of time to change your perspective. Instead, make a full list of what you would do with a girl baby and a full list of what you would do with a boy baby. And then, do both.
Help others see the light. If there are others in your family or friend group who are still hell-bent on knowing, take them out for a drink and get all of the grousing over with. Help them to focus on the shared qualities. Remind them that this baby will not have the opportunity to rule the land based on genitals, but based on an electoral college (and redirect to a fun political debate instead!).

One of the things that terrifies me most about possibly becoming a mother one day is my intense love affair with sleep. I am not a doctor, midwife, or labor doula because I simply cannot imagine happiness in a life that includes fewer than eight consecutive hours of sleep per night. In fact, I had to take a break from writing this post just so I could take a nap.

It's in my genes, too. My mother is an Olympic Napper, or would be if they ever opened the event. After large meals we frequently take spontaneous family floor naps.

You probably have your own weakness, too. Perhaps yours also stands between you and your idea of the "perfect mother" like your maniacal obsession with clean countertops, your propensity for jet-setting, or your insistence on watching the Late, Late, Late Show. I have good news for you: so long as your weakness doesn't involve ritual sacrifice, you're very likely going to be a great mother. Especially if you know what that weakness is.

Steps to Being a Great Mother Even with a Weakness:
1. Identify your weakness(es). Determine which areas of your life appear to be inconsistent with motherhood and you're not willing to compromise. There should be one or two, or possibly three. More than three and you'll need to whittle your list.
2. Articulate ways others can help you (in writing). In my case, I would need people who are willing to come to my house to supervise mama nap time. I might also need someone to spend the night periodically/routinely to share the duties of night feedings. If you need someone who will help you learn how to travel with a newborn, or possibly babysit for a weekend now and again, it's good to know that now. 
2.5. If your request sounds silly in writing like "someone must come to my house at 11:35 each night so that I can stay abreast of all of the celebrity antics," maybe sit with it for a week before you proceed to the next step. But if it will make all the difference in your life, perhaps sit down with someone neutral to have a conversation about your needs. Maybe there are solutions others can think of. If you decide it is still essential, proceed along.
3. Recruit your village. Are there people in your life who would be interested in helping in the ways you've outlined above? Now is a great time to ask them to get a sense of how much help you can get by cashing in favors. For instance, I have some friends who would likely do the nap thing, but maybe not so many who would do the overnight thing. Do you have friends who will clean your counters or help you stay caught up on the LLL Show even if it is now waaay past your bedtime?
4. Hire some village people. Maybe you think you want cute baby clothes or high-tech surveillance equipment, but in my case, neither of those things will help me much. A postpartum doula might willingly work with me to spend a night every week for six weeks for a not too unreasonable rate. Consider hiring a cleaning person to do an expert job once a week rather than cashing in every last favor for the sake of clean countertops.

Heed any inkling you have that something might stand between you and a mentally healthy postpartum period and address it now, preemptively rather than six weeks into misery. 

What do you think of on your birthday? Most people (myself included) think of cake, the blessing/curse of aging, and monumental years passed: 16, 18, 21, 30, 40 etc. Every year my mom calls and says “Happy Birthday! You had the BIGGEST HEAD EVER,” and by that she means my actual cranium was in the 90th percentile and my body in the 5th. Thank goodness I've balanced out a bit since then. She hopes I experience the same blessing when I give birth. This has always been the way I experience my birthday, with a sigh of relief that I've made it around the sun yet again, and a curse disguised as a blessing. However, after chatting with a friend today, I've started thinking of my birthday a little bit differently.

Let me digress for a moment (I promise to bring it all back around). Expectant mamas usually have some idea of what their birth story will look like. In fact, those of use who work with mamas strongly encourage the development of a birth plan which includes the who/what/where of birth from generalities like “board certified obstetrician should be handy” to specifics like “no tweeting, no matter what.” We script it out from beginning to end with little addenda like a flight attendant letting the team know what they'll need to know just in case.

Days and years later, we tell the story from the same perspective, in the same order, with a surprise ending like “huge head” or “100 year blizzard,” or “fainted dead away on the floor.”

I think we're doing it backwards. Or rather, we should be.

Think of all of the greatest memories you have. They usually don't go like this:

“I planned the perfect trip to Paris, which I took, and then I went home.”

They don't go like this, because this is a boring, terrible story. Even if you end with “...and then I fainted dead away,” or “...and then I stepped in gum,” or “...and then I found five dollars,” it doesn't get any better.

But, if you tell it like this: “Let me tell you how I met my partner after the worst trip of my life. I went to Paris and the trip went mostly as planned, but on my trip home we were diverted to Tuscaloosa, where I was marooned in the airport awaiting my connection to Knoxville. To make matters worse, my bags somehow ended up in Alberta. After three tries to get home via air, I finally gave up and took the bus. Because I took the bus instead, the airline said they weren't responsible for my bags, even though they sent them to the wrong country! Well, Marty was working at the lost luggage center in Alberta, and because he's Canadian he felt sorry for me and offered to drive and meet me halfway. Well, three weeks and 2,000 miles later we met up in the middle of Iowa and it was love at first sight.”

If there is one thing I can guarantee you beyond all others, it is that your birth story will not be the same as your birth plan. Unexpected things will happen, but each of those unexpected things will be another level of color in your wildly exciting and amazing birth story.

My tips for recording your birth story:
Consider the byline: based on the true story. Your child's birth story is your birth story, too. Consider which details are helpful to you and to baby and which can be modified into other characters, symbols, and images. Rather than “your lazy butt couldn't find the exit, so this ended in a traumatic C-section,” try something like “the doctor saw that you were lost and created a magic door.” Maybe this sounds silly, but it can profoundly affect the way you view the story, your baby, and your scar. In my opinion, necessary C-sections are magical.

Channel your inner impressionist, not your journalist: Sometimes photos are appropriate, but just as I've found in travel, you never really get a picture that captures the most meaningful moments. Don't fret about it, recreate it. Perhaps everyone who was there can make an image from their memory, whether they create a stick figure drawing, a painting, or something abstract. You can add in the relevant photos you have, but sometimes drawings are even better.

Remember: start with the happy ending. The end of the story is your baby's birth, so start there in your mind. Your most pivotal memory could be something like “...and then, after nine months I created a beautiful, perfect human out of the very best parts of me, and that perfect human, was YOU.”

When your next birthday comes around start with the memory that by some miracle, you were formed from tiny bits of ancient stars and the energy of the mother who bore you.

Producing an entirely new human is not exactly a cakewalk; it takes quite a lot of work. While my friend Katie Wise of YoMama Yoga in Boulder says “There is no such thing as an unproductive pregnant day,” this is a whole new brand of productivity.

Most of us have been trained to show how hard we work in one of two ways: brilliance or physical discipline. Unfortunately, the rules of pregnancy are entirely different. Rather than divining marketing plans or pushing yourself to take an extra lap on the track, you now get to achieve the most primal and impressive feat, which includes new mental and physical preparation. Each step seems like a lot to chew on, but each phase from pregnancy to birth to motherhood prepares you for what is next and stretches you beyond your previous concept of self.

Mental Strength Training
Release Linear Time as You Know It: If you are a calendar gal with lists of what to do and buy and exactly how to allocate each minute, schedule a little free time this coming week where you will take off your watch, step away from technological things, and make a concerted effort to follow your body. A solo walk sans tunes and podcasts might sound torturous right now, but you'll find that once you get into it you separate yourself from time. This is crucial as you move through the birth process, because as plugged in as you are right now, your uterus obeys no man's clock. Neither will your baby.

Divide and Conquer: Emotions run high during pregnancy because hormones are coursing through you. Your baby gets a hormone bath each time you think of the accidental bender you went on when you may have been one week pregnant. Start to talk to your crazy self like this “Wow, I can't believe the one time I went to Vegas and got smashed was also the same time I probably got pregnant. I have likely done some irreversible harm to Spud.” Self two replies: “Sounds like you're wallowing in regret instead of working on your kegel exercises. Kudos for laying off the booze ever since. Now get clenching.”

Shields Up, Brace for Impact: Know your triggers. If your well-meaning mother in law insists on talking about your weight and you know that there is nothing short of alien invasion that will redirect her, plan your retort(s). It can be fun to plan all sorts of nasty rebuttals to her commentary like “Actually, I wouldn't know what a bowling ball looks like when balanced on two chicken legs, because bowling while eating wings sounds mighty unsanitary,” or, “So we're clear, if you call Spud 'portly' once s/he's on the outside, I promise to feed you to the Children of the Corn.” And then, plan your real strategy, “My midwife/doctor says I'm very healthy and I'm glad to hear you agree.”

Physical Strength Training:
Sometimes your provider will tell you to hold still for awhile, but if they want you to keep moving, here are some thoughts I have about that.

Shoot for a B-: If you were training for marathons before your pregnancy, you may want to scale it back just a tad. Because a good portion of your effort is going towards creating life out of kale salad, you needn't push yourself to accomplish any other magic. 80% effort is your new standard.

Prepare to squat: Squatting during birth is all the rage. Women all around the world do it instinctively, and you probably will to. This is a great time to practice your birth positions by strengthening your squatting muscles. Be careful to do this under the advisement of a birth provider or skilled prenatal yoga instructor *shameless plug* so that you don't injure yourself or negatively affect the position of your baby.

Melt: Learning to unclench every muscle in your body during and between contractions can make labor a whole lot less consuming. Particularly when you are performing a mental exercise, or have some level of stress in your mind/emotional body, soften your physical body and your mind will follow. Practice makes perfect, so start as soon as possible.

Ever glanced at magazines at the checkout counter and wondered what it would be like to have everyone eager to learn what you ate last week, where you plan to shop next weekend, or who you've been sleeping with?

Congratulations, mama. Now we all want to know (we might have some good guesses on at least one of the areas above).

Your pregnancy announcement tells the masses that you're identifying yourself as someone worth cyberstalking. Your bump may attract all sorts of inappropriate questions, unsolicited advice, and direct stares. I know some mamas who love this, who welcome their new status as The Keeper of the Next Generation and some who start wearing abnormally large hats and bags to “cover” their belly just as your favorite character does on TV when the actress becomes pregnant, but the character she plays does not. P.S.: No one is fooling anyone.

As anyone who moves into the ranks of fame will tell you, you will soon learn who your friends really are.

Tips for Becoming a Famous Mama-to-be:

1. Channel your inner bobble head: when onlookers recount their post-baby exercise routine, or offer recipes for homebrewed salves for your soon-to-be-sore nipples, smile and nod your head. Tell them you'll look into honey-butter nipple salve and thank them for their time. Maybe you will, maybe you won't. But be the ever-gracious celeb rather than crushing dreams.
   
2. Wield your belly power responsibly: people may offer you a seat on the bus, an extra-generous helping of dessert, or even money and gifts. Consider yourself your baby's agent, and kindly accept any assistance your baby (or your baby's mother's ankles) could really use. Sit when you really need to, even if it inconveniences someone, but don't barge onto the bus thinking “I get everything I want because I am the host to the alien species which will now take over your planet, you lowly Earth creatures!”
   
3. Tell us how you will tell us: if you plan to announce your birth via email, let us know. If you plan to livestream your birth, let us know how to tune in. Just tell us how to love you most, or we will take it upon ourselves to check your Facebook like it is our religion.
   

Tips for Being an Adoring Fan, Not a Criminal Stalker/Creeper

1. Repeat after me: You Look Great. Never qualify this statement with “... for someone who is seven months pregnant,” or “for someone who just ran a marathon with a Thanksgiving turkey snuggled in their britches” or any other qualifier. You don't look big, or small, or tired, or anything else, unless they truly don't appear to look well, in which case the only reasonable substitute is “you look like you're not feeling well.”
   
2. Send only love. Post affirmations of support on Facebook, send well wishes, and keep your gossip among your non-pregnant friends. Never say “weren't you due last Friday?” or “wow, are you sure you don't have twins in there?” Mamas feel enough pressure on their bladders, they don't need your two cents, too (also, feel free to check facebook like it is your religion because it won't bother mama at all).
   
3. Unless you are paid high sums by a tabloid magazine, tho shalt not post someone else's baby pictures on the interwebs without their permission. Sometimes, after playing host to a baby for nine months, mama actually wants the pleasure of announcing her baby rather than logging onto Pintrest to find you've already given away her exclusive.
   

When is the last time you scheduled a regular conversation with your internal organs? For the sake of your mental health, I sure hope your answer is "never" or "last Thanksgiving." We don't have to check in with our spleens or livers, and our digestion seems to march on without our explicit direction. Our bladders are uncooperative and selfish.

Perhaps this is why spending time "communicating with your baby" seems silly. Throughout pregnancy you might spend more one-on-one time with your toilet. In the first trimester, you're engaged in what my college friend Steve called "confessions with Father John" while later on you become a frequent flyer.

So when are you supposed to "connect" with your baby, and why on earth would you do it? My thoughts below. 

Preconception: if you're a woman, the makings of your baby are already in you. Not only do you have one half of the genetic material and instructions, but you have the building blocks, too. 
1. Start cleaning up your act. Ask yourself "would I feed cheese puffs/diet pills/red dye #492 to my baby?" If not, stop eating it. Your body remakes itself constantly using the materials you put in. And do you know what you make your baby out of? You.
2. Treat yourself the way you'd like the mother of your child to be treated. Get some sleep and cultivate the things in your life that make you happiest.
3. Spend some time in the quiet of life sharing your thoughts and feelings with that bit of mystical magic (or physics) that babies come from. If you're ready for baby, put that sense out there "Open for business". If not, be polite and let baby know you're closed for the season but will be open the day after Memorial Day.

The Hopeful Place: from the moment you start trying until you make it through the first trimester, I like to think you're in the hopeful place. Most faith traditions set the work of the soul a bit behind the work of the flesh, so focus on your physical well being and set your sights on the hope that everything will turn out as it should.
1. Start to focus your mental worries and fears into physical actions, like walking, knitting, compulsively working the knots out of all of your necklaces, etc.
2. Focus even more intently on your self care by saying no to things you don't want to do and making more time for yourself. You and your baby will fill this space in no time.
3. In the place beyond words is the hopeful place, where you open yourself up to instinct. Every time you say or think "worry" reframe the thought into "hope." For instance: "I'm worried that I haven't felt my baby move" to "I hope I get to feel my baby move soon."  

The Investment Place: Once you cross into the second trimester, you're in the investment place. Perhaps you share the news with family, friends and coworkers or start to see that Thanksgiving belly push beyond the limits of an overindulgent meal.
1. Take several minutes a day to put your hands on your belly and showcase your feelings to your baby. She is getting the same surges of hormones you're releasing, so if you're stressed, she can feel it to! Tell her what the stress is about. 
2. Open the incoming channels, if you haven't already. Your baby is not tapping in Morse Code on your bladder, but she may still have sneaky ways of sending you messages back. Listen for them.
3. As you get closer to the end of your pregnancy, you will start to have better intuition about everything. This doesn't mean that you ate bad eggs, or that you should open a 900 number and go into the psychic reading business. This special power will help you navigate your birth with all of the expertise of the millions of women who have come before you.