Science vs Folklore: Stealing the fun

Up until the last few weeks, my local hospital had a policy not to tell the sex of babies to anyone.  Not some kind of politically correct plan to save babies from parents who might favour boys.  No, that might be acceptable.  It was actually a reaction to be sued years ago when a family kitted out their nursery at great expense for a little girl before getting a little boy.  Ooops.  But not really a reason for a lawsuit.

In any case, the hospital decided to cover its butt more in future.  Thom and I got used to the idea and even looked forward to the uncertainty and surprise that awaited us on the big day.  Besides, there were all the old wives tales about how to predict the sex to keep us interested and entertained.  I found a list of them complied on The Baby Centre and I ticked most all the boxes for boys.  People at work, mostly the women who have children of their own, told me they thought I was going to have boys.  They couldn't lay their fingers on why, exactly.

My mother-in-law said she also thought I was the type to have boys.  My brother-in-law, whose daughter just turned 1 years old this month, was told that he was the type to have girls.  I puzzle over how a person can look 'the type' to have girls or boys, but in his case it proved correct.

We have all come to rely on medical science so much.  Pokes and prods and biopsies offer up irrefutable answers.  And irrefutable answers are the most desirable kind of answers to us uncertainty-hating humans.  But all this folklore has come from somewhere.  Wise old women, traditionally the ones people had to rely on for midwifery and birth, must have taken note through the centuries of differences between boy-pregnancies and girl-pregnancies.  Their knowledge, not seen as scientific in today's world, must have been based on correlations and large numbers of test cases.

For me the folklore as been proved correct again.  Since the hospital's policy change, we found out for certain that we are having boys.  Despite the excitement of looking forward to finding out when they arrived, we were also sucked in by the promised calm of medical, scientific certainty.  The ultrasound operator asked if we wanted to know.  I looked at Thom, his eyes lit up and nodding away like an idiot.  It was all the permission I needed and we said 'yes, tell us'.

I feel a mixture of satisfaction and regret.  Satisfaction that I know what's coming.  Regret that I've traded some of impending excitement for a rock solid certainty.  Science gave me an answer, but kinda stole the fun.  I'd bet the women across the centuries would have done the same, given the choice.  It was just that those who would have wanted to know were left to the best they could rely on - the observations of the wise old women - which, as it turns out, were pretty damn good.