Old Wive's Tales

I'm now 37 weeks pregnant (next weekend the baby will be considered full term) and I have no greater sense of the baby's gender than I did going in. With Clio, I was 100% convinced through my third trimester that it was a girl, despite the fact that everyone told me I was carrying like I was having a boy. Maybe it was just that I secretly wanted a girl; or the fact that we had a list of girl's names including a very certain front-runner (Clara, after two of Dave's great-great grandmothers and the little girl in the nutcracker) but not a single name we loved for a boy; or maybe I really did just have an intuition about it.

This time people again say I'm carrying like I'm having a boy, but I feel they might be right. This baby is moving around a lot, as Clio did, but Clio felt like an acrobat, and this one is more like a boxer. Is it misguided to believe the baby is a boy because it feels more aggressive than the girl I already carried?

To try to put these questions to rest, I had Dave perform the Ring test. I can remember one of my aunts doing the ring test with my mom when she was pregnant with my brother Rory; apparently all three of us kids were predicted correctly, simply by tying my mother's ring to a long piece of thread and dangling it over her pregnant belly. Theory goes, if the ring moves back and forth like a pendulum, the baby is a boy; around in a circle, you can expect a girl.

So down I lumbered onto my back on the floor (we wondered if I would ever get back up), and Dave dutifully held the thread very, very still. So still, in fact, tgat the ring barely moved at all, and when it did the thread seemed to move in a very slight pendulum while the ring itself moved in a circle. Hmmmm. Inconclusive, to say the least.

As one of the architects pointed out at the Montessori party the other night, the same test was performed with a pencil in the novel Middlesex, equally inconclusive, and if you know of the book you know how that turned out. So let's just say we're now hoping for a baby that's all girl or all boy, whichever way the ring swings.

Of course, the other wives' tale is the aforementioned belly shape. With Clio, everyone said boy but for very conflicting reasons: You're carrying high, must be a boy. You're carrying low, is it a boy? Etc. So for now, I've been curious whether I'm carrying the same.

Here I am on my due date with Clio:



And here I am last night:


So. Is it a boy or a girl?