Trust, but verify… before you make the blue card

I went to a baby shower on Sunday afternoon. The shower was for someone I don’t know very well, but we’ve become casual acquaintances at church. She and her husband are expecting their first child in the next couple of weeks.

Some time ago, while I was out on one of my many shopping expeditions to the OshKosh outlet store, I had picked up some very practical, but very cute, playclothes for a little boy. I had been told that they were having a boy. I bought a pair of jeans, a couple of pairs of shorts, and two bodysuit shirts – one with sports equipment scattered all over it, and the other was white with red and navy stripes. These were all 12 month sized – I like to give bigger sizes at showers.

Anyway, as we were all sitting down with food, I began hearing about how, “if it’s a girl, her name will be…” and I absolutely froze.

“Isn’t the baby a boy?” I asked the person sitting next to me.

“Um, they don’t know what they’re having,” she told me.

The grandma-to-be overheard me. “Well, the father is insisting that it is a boy, so that’s what he’s telling everyone.”

I felt twenty kinds of stupid. Here I was, with a gift that was very much for a little boy, and I had even specifically made a blue baby card!!

I apologized to the mother-to-be right before she opened my gift. “Feel free to re-gift if you end up having a little girl,” I told her.

“Well, my husband will be glad that I got boy clothes,” she said cheerfully. After she opened them, she was surprised that I thought they were so boyish. “I think a girl could wear these!” she declared about the shirts. “I’ll just put a red bow in her hair.”

I still felt just stupid, but what can I do when the father of the baby is going around telling people that it’s going to be a boy???

Moral of the story: Always check with the mother of the baby, not the father, when asking about the gender.

I was still so mortified that I called my mother on the way home from the shower. “Well, maybe they will have a boy and you’ll have nothing to worry about,” she consoled me. “If not, we’ll go out and find the pinkest and frilliest dress we can find and give that to them after the baby’s born. And on the bright side, it will make a great story to blog about,” she laughed.

Moms always know how to make you feel better… even when you’re grown-up and a mom, too.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, August 1st, 2006 at 2:46 am and is filed under General.
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