Tai Gooden and Girls

By TAI GOODEN

On June 22nd, 2013, I paced nervously in my tiny bathroom. I hate waiting for most things, but waiting for a pregnancy test is the worst. I needed to know if I was pregnant or just suffering from food poisoning. After a few long minutes, I took a deep breath and glanced down. POSITIVE! I flung the door open and showed it to my husband. We wore identical wide grins and hugged each other tightly. For some odd reason, we actually wanted another crying, pooping, expensive human being.

Our only child was ecstatic about her new brother or sister. Over the next few months, we slowly trickled the news out to our family, friends, and (of course) Facebook. We finally revealed the sex of our baby to everyone in January 2014, just one month shy of my due date. We were having another healthy baby girl! Our social media timelines and phones were flooded with the anticipated congratulatory messages.

What we didn’t anticipate was some of the negative and offensive comments about having another child of the same sex. Since I was already a mom, I knew how idiots come out of nowhere and try to police what you should do during and after a pregnancy. But, this was on a whole new level. A simple announcement suddenly made my uterus a hotter topic than the thickening plot of Scandal.

These are just a few of the stupid statements I have heard since I announced the sex of my second child:

“Oh man, you are having another girl? You can always try again.”
Oh man, you have no idea how disappointed we are to have a completely healthy baby girl. Girls are so useless. But it’s okay because you helped me realize that I can try again! Obviously, I had no idea that I am allowed to have another baby with my husband. Also, since I am the second girl in my family, I am not offended at ALL. Next time, we will “tweak our technique and get it right” because our life mission is to pop out a little boy.

“You need to give your husband a boy. Every man needs a boy.”
What happens if I never have a boy? I guess I’ll be stoned to death if I don’t birth the necessary male heir to the Gooden throne. Every time someone says this to me, I wait for the TV cameras to come out. I truly believe MTV brought Boiling Points back and I have been on the show for an entire season.

I also wonder what it means to “give” my husband a boy. I did not go through nine months of a hellacious pregnancy (twice) and push out something the size of a giant pumpkin from my vagina with no epidural (twice) to say “Here, my husband, I give you this small human. Thank you for allowing me to birth your offspring.” They are my kids too and they are not holiday presents.

“Are you done? Did you get your tubes tied or are you just on birth control for now?”
It is no one’s business whether I tie my tubes into a pretzel or pop birth control pills every day. The only person I expect to be this invested in my reproductive decisions is my gynecologist. And, why does it matter if we are done? This is our second kid people. It’s not like we have a mini army running around. Even if we had a ton of kids, it should not matter as long as we aren’t hitting you up for cash. Maybe we will have another child, maybe we won’t. But when we do, we won’t consult with the general public about our decision.

Just looking at these comments brings back bad memories for me. I used to wonder why people would make such ridiculous statements. Perhaps they had good intentions and wanted us to experience the joy of raising a child of each sex. Or, they were plain douchebags who wanted to make us unhappy because they are unhappy. I may never know why and I won’t waste time trying to figure it out.

After I posted a couple of social media rants about my initial frustration, I found camaraderie among my friends and followers with all girls or boys. We had the same message for the nosy peanut gallery: Get Out of My Uterus.

Tai Gooden is a freelance writer, mom, wife, part-time blogger and full-time Whovian. In April 2014, she published Amour Rising: A Collection of Poetry. When she is not pretending to be in the TARDIS, she’s either on Twitter (@taigooden) or pretending to be a grown up by working, cooking, cleaning, and drinking fancy wine.


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This post originally appeared on xoJane. Republished with permission.
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Denene Millner

Mom. NY Times bestselling author. Pop culture ninja. Unapologetic lover of shoes, bacon and babies. Nice with the verbs. Founder of the top black parenting website, MyBrownBaby.

6 Comments

  1. I have four girls and a boy and when I tell people of my hudband’s.culture they want to know where in the birth order he fell, assuming that I was disappointed and kept trying until we had a boy• .
    I am thankful to have been blessed with both sexes, but I prayed for girls as a big sister of three young brothers and I feel part of their sisterhood.

  2. I have three sisters and no brothers so my mom always got the “So you’re still trying for a boy?” whether she was pregnant or just had another girl, whether she was on her own, with my dad, or WITH US!!! She always kept her cool, though, and replied with a humorous “Oh, we weren’t trying for anything. The first one turned out so great we just cloned her.”. We all looked so much alike from birth to age ten or so that it was actually pretty funny and diffused the situation.

  3. Interesting. I think people assume that those who choose to have children want one of each. It is rude to assume that someone would be less than happy to have another little bundle of joy regardless of gender.

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