Boy vs. girl

OK ... for those who don't want to know (my father-in-law, for example), I won't be revealing whether we're having a boy or a girl until the last paragraph of this entry. If you don't want to know, skip it. I'll do my best to not refer to the baby as "him" or "her" too much during the next few months, but I can't make any promises.

I don't get people who want to wait to find out whether it's a boy or a girl. Like Amanda said, "It's a surprise no matter when you find out." That's why we agreed early on we wanted to know as early as possible.
That would let us narrow our name choices, start buying the right kinds of clothes and set up the baby's room in a gender-appropriate fashion (which wasn't really a problem, as we went with bright green as the predominant color).
We also wanted to check how accurate the Chinese Gender Chart was (http://www.thelaboroflove.com/chart/). It said we were going to have a boy. (And even the ultrasound technician said the thing is usually right).
Then there was Amanda's logic on the issue. She was convinced we were going to have a boy because of how queasy, absent-minded and moody she felt. She figured having baby boy hormones in her system was throwing her body off-kilter. (Conversely, a friend of ours suggested that those sounded more like girl hormones; a boy would have made her more logical and rational, he deadpanned).
On top of all that, Amanda's mother dreamed it was a boy.
It seemed pretty heavily weighted in one direction (the hormonal meanderings of our friend Chad notwithstanding). But does any of that mean anything?

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SPOILER

COMING
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In this case, the gender chart, Amanda and her mother were right. We're going to have a little boy. So there's only one surprise left -- the name. We're pretty much set on one name, but we're going to keep it to ourselves until the big day (exactly three months from today). Still, we're willing to take suggestions if anyone has any ...

Dad's-eye view

Sometime around the end of January, I'm going to be a dad.
That's getting easier to say now, but as the big day approaches, it's getting more and more frightening.
Sure, it was fun early on. My wife Amanda and I would joke about the book that suggested we need 600 diapers in the first six weeks. That's more than 14 diapers per day ... they're kidding, right? (And, as the dad-to-be, you might guess my first response was, "How much is that going to cost?")
Well, in just a few more months, we'll find out.
Until then, I have no virtually no idea what to expect. Sure, we're past the morning-sickness phase (that doesn't come back, does it?) and we're past the point where Amanda is concerned that people think she's fat instead of pregnant.
But there's new surprises around every corner. For the next 15 months or so, I'll be chronicling my experiences as a first-time father … from the months leading up to birth through our baby's first birthday. The plan is for a dad's-eye view of the event that rightly focuses on the mom and baby.
It's going to be quite a ride, and I hope you'll join me at courierpostonline.com/blogs/correa.html for all the absurdity and confusion that comes along with childbirth.
Catching up
As exciting as things are in this third trimester, the real adventure started months ago. It was back around April that we figured out we were going to have a baby.
We'd been trying for a little while, and those first faint color changes on the pregnancy tests clued us in that things were going in the right direction. Of course, since my wife was generally taking the test days before the box suggested it, my feeling was that there was nothing to get excited about yet.
But as the second line on the test grew darker each morning, it looked like this was the real thing.
Then we went to the doctor's office, Amanda took one more test and the doctor confirmed it.
We were actually going to have a baby.
Almost immediately, the anxiety set in. We know the statistics about miscarriages, and the last thing we wanted to do was jinx ourselves by getting too excited too early.
So we kept everything under wraps for a few months. It's the only defense the recently pregnant have against the unstoppable mathematics that not every baby is going to make it.
We held our breath and we waited. And waited. And waited. For what seemed like an eternity.
And then we got to the second week of pregnancy.
This wasn't going to be possible.
So, of course, we told some family members and asked them to keep things quiet. For the most part, they did so -- although I still don't understand my father-in-law's decision to tell the neighbors across the street from his father's shore house in North Wildwood. He had to tell someone, he said.
Fair enough.
Avoid the joke
But we still had some waiting to do before we felt comfortable sharing with others. Amanda was sure the hormones raging through her body were making the pregnancy obvious.
And here's my No. 1 piece of advice for all expecting fathers:
When the mother-to-be is talking about her raging hormones and pregnancy symptoms such as edginess, mood swings, irritability, inability to concentrate and more you must not -- no matter how funny it seems to you -- say anything like, "Wow, it sounds like you've been pregnant since the day we met."
Trust me on this one.
Sure, it's funny. Sure, it might lighten the mood and reduce some of the stress that you're both feeling near the end of the first trimester. But it also could backfire.
Of course, if you haven't already learned to be very careful with a stressed wife, it's probably too late anyway.
And for those of you wondering, I didn't make that joke to my wife. I did, however, tell her about my desire to make the joke. She laughed and said she would have thought it was funny. I'm not so sure.
But it's all part of the adventure.

About us

Mark and Amanda have been married since 2001. They met in 1996 while attending Penn State University.
Mark is the editorial page editor at the Courier-Post, a Gannett newspaper based in Cherry Hill, N.J.
Amanda is a landscape designer for a Pennsylvania firm.
They live in Camden County, N.J., a few miles east of Philadelphia.