I got pregnant about 1 year after I got married, which I didn’t expect. I had heard that trying to get pregnant at 30+ was difficult. For me? Not so much. Once I found out I was pregnant; I was ecstatic! So I had my multi-vitamins, had lots of rest. Ate lots of McDonalds French fries and chocolate. It was lots of fun—until at one of my early checkups, the 90 lbs doctor at the practice told me that I was putting on weight! That was the last time I saw her—Nobody gets in the way of my fries and chocolate!

Later in my pregnancy; at about 7 months, almost every woman I met looked at me up and down and questioned, “You’re having a boy, right?” Or made a declaration, “You’re having a boy! I can tell because you are round; you are oval, the baby is high, the baby is low” and so on. Everyone I heard that I went into panic/denial mode. “Oh no, no, no, I’m not! I told them. Thinking to myself; I can’t have a boy! I don’t know anything about boys! I know Barbies, paper dolls, coloring books, dress up, baking cookies, etc. All the girlie things of the 1960s. I had no experience with boys! So imagine my reaction when in the delivery room, the doctor announced in the opening room that “it’s a…..BOY!”

I almost asked the doctor to repeat himself, just to be sure.

Of course, the minute he was put into my arms; it didn’t matter what my baby was. My baby was healthy and beautiful and I loved him. And that’s all that mattered. I would figure the rest out later.