Shit on my hands

BB

I may have been tickled pink with the knowledge I was having a girl, but that didn’t mean I was ready to embrace all that came with it, aesthetically speaking. Sure, I entertained fantasies of doing stupid stuff with her hair and making her wear knee high socks with sandals (mission accomplished on both counts), but my idea was that we’d be giving all things pink and princessy the wide berth.

Some people had other ideas.

On my second day in hospital, as it began to dawn on me that I wouldn’t be allowed to continue ingesting my body weight in morphine every day – that I would actually be attempting to do this stone cold sober and relentlessly tired to boot – the gifts started arriving. The pink helium balloons. The pink floral arrangements. The pink onesies. The pink ‘daddy’s little princess’ tee shirts. The pink stuffed bears. It seemed a flamingo had thrown up in my hospital room. I was thoroughly, ungraciously, visibly unimpressed. ‘Get this crap OUT OF HERE’ I hissed at my daughter’s father. Engorged breasts, two hours sleep per night, a packet of staples holding my abdomen together – this I could take, but a teeny weeny pink velour tracksuit – that could break me. My partner obliged and removed the offending items, to the absolute bewilderment of the nursing staff. What a sour, righteous prig, they must have been thinking. And really, they were right. If I ever had another girl, I’d cop the pink stuff on the chin and accept it all in good grace, rather than turning a joyous occasion into yet another opportunity to whine about gender stereotyping. After all, none of the well-wishers gifting me with the fluffy pink stuff of my nightmares were actively trying to rub me up the wrong way. They weren’t saying a cute pastel fairy princess was all my baby could be. They weren’t implying she had to be pretty to be loved. They weren’t saying ‘no blue shit for you, young lady!’ They were just saying ‘congratulations!’.