Watermelon or Basketball?

I think 99% of first time parents would not have any preference if their newborn will be a boy or a girl. Surely for your first child, it really doesnt matter as long as it's all healthy & happy and everything's going on smoothly. Right?

Well, not quite for us.

Michael wants a girl. Not that he would leave me or throw tanties if we have a boy but he's really hoping for a girl. This is for the simplest and silliest reason that we've actually got a name for a girl picked out and have NOTHING at all for a boy.

Michael wanted this name even way before we were married. I wasn't on board at first cos i thot it's a pretty simple and common name but i was deeply in love see, so it didnt really matter lah at the time. I did tell him it'd be open to discussion after we're married and secretly thot maybe i could change his mind later on. But after we got married, we started talking about it more and more and after a while it sorta kinda grew on me and i really don't mind it now. In fact, i couldnt really imagine any other name if we do have a baby girl Laidler. Also, it's only common when i pronounce it but with Michael's Aussie pronunciation, it sounds like a whole different name altogether and i love it! hehe.

Besides having a name, he also has a strong and confident feeling that it's gonna be a girl. I don't really know or 'feel' anything in particular yet but i remembered very early on thinking that it might be a girl but when we had our 1st scan, my very first thot was that it might be a boy. Then after that i don't really feel anything but now im just saying that i think it's a boy just because Michael says it's gonna be a girl :p We would be able to find out in February when we have our next scan BUT......Michael doesn't want to know.

This is another common thing here, most parents do not wanna find out the sex of the baby beforehand. They want it to be a surprise. I find that very hard to get used to cos all of my friends & family back home would know as soon as they're able to find out. Everytime i ask a pregnant friend here, almost always they'd say they don't know and don't wanna know, except for my Asian friends. Be it from Sri Lanka or Hong Kong, like most Malaysians i know, they'd find out beforehand, first born or not.

When i told my family this, they couldnt get used to it either. My ma almost went berserk and kinda like forced me to find out secretly. She couldnt understand the whole wanting it to be a surprise thing. It took a while for me to calm her down. It's not like i wanted to know that bad. Well, it'd be nice to know and my only reason for wanting to know is because the Dr and the sonographer would obviously know, so i wanna know osso lah right. But i quite like the idea of it being a surprise too. It wouldnt be the same if it's only a surprise to Michael and not for me. Plus, as if Michael would trust that i wouldn't slip if i do find out and he doesn't. :p

So now im digging out all the old wives' tales on how to tell if it's a boy or a girl the old fashioned way. It's quite fun actually, but in the end you'd never know for sure of course.

One of it says that if your tummy's shape like a basketball, it's a boy and if watermelon, it's a girl. A colleague of mine who's only about 2 weeks more pregnant than me, definitely has a boink boink pointing out very nicely rounded basketball tummy and she just did her 19 week scan and found out it's a boy. I can't say much about my no tummy right now but it's definitely not a basketball. Maybe a half watermelon spread across my tummy.

Another popular one is the Chinese calendar thingy and according to that, it'd be a girl. There's also the ring pendulum thing that proved to be correct most times according to one of those baby quiz websites. I haven't tried that one yet tho.

At the end of the day, it really doesn't matter if it's a boy or girl. Altho we haven't got a boy's name yet, we have another 4-5 months to decide on something that we both can agree on. We have been trying out & testing a few names just to see if any of it sounds ok. By testing i mean, me trying to call it in a manja voice and see if it is 'macho' enough. Michael's way of testing is by trying to call it in a strict voice like 'Sulaiman, come here!'. Or asking my tummy, 'How's Bruce doing?' Yeah, he likes names like Sulaiman & Malik and Bruce is his grandfather's name. All the names that i suggested before he wasn't so keen on, like Edward or Cullen..hehehe...

I don't know how people come up with really cool nice names. Some like Monica Geller and my SIL, Vicki even have names picked out for their kids from very early on. We've got nothing. I hope we'll find a boy's name that we'll both like, have a good meaning, simple and easy enough to pronounce & spell here in Oz or back in M'sia and just the right one.

Whatever it is, if it's a watermelon, she'll definitely be daddy's little girl and if it's a basketball, he''ll most certainly be the apple of my eye.