Waiting For You

Chapter 28: Cardboard Boxes

Chapter 28: Cardboard Boxes

Sam

"The woman from the clinic told me we could find out the sex of the babies if we wanted," Lia tells me once she's recovered herself. She's looking at me a little bit too carefully, as if she's expecting me to chuck my plate of food at the wall in an angry trans fit.

Spoiler alert, I don't.

"I didn't think you could find that out so soon," I reply.

"Yeah, me neither, but I guess they can from the genetic testing," Lia shrugs.

"So that's why you're watching those? You wanna find out?" I deduce, a grin slowly forming on my face.

My eyes dart back toward the laptop screen. We've moved on to a new video now—a very perky woman in a flowery dress is baking a layered, pink and blue cake for her sister's gender reveal party. I look over at Lia again and she's got a guilty smile on her face, like she thinks she's doing something wrong.

"I don't wanna do anything crazy like that, definitely no party or whatever," she says quickly, gesturing at the laptop screen. "But I don't know, I mean—what do you think? Is it weird?"

"Well, I've never heard of any trans people imploding because their wives wanted to know the sex of their babies early," I tell her jokingly. "So I think I could handle it."

"I'm being serious! I wanna know your opinion!" she laughs and leans over to bump my shoulder. She doesn't move back to her side of the bed though, so I take advantage of the situation to wrap my arm around her, pulling her against me.

In all seriousness, I don't have anything against the whole gender reveal trend that's taken over social media in the last decade or so.

If somebody wants to celebrate their unborn child's genitals with all of their family and friends—and YouTube—they have every right to do so. If they want to decorate their house in pink and blue, then by all means. If they want to spend money on helium balloons and firecrackers, they should go for it. It's harmless fun, and honestly it's the last thing the LGBTQ community should be getting angry about these days.

We've been having a lot of fun taking photos of Lia's bump for Instagram, and comparing the twins to food products. Isn't that another trend brought to you by crazy millennials looking to get more likes? Being pregnant in 2018 is wild, and if Lia wants to go the distance and check off all the social media boxes, I'm going to support her in her endeavors.

I'll even buy her cans of pink and/or blue silly string if that's what she really wants, because I know in the end it doesn't have any effect on the way we're going to raise our kids. We're not going to put them in a tiny box based on whether or not they have a vagina.

"I don't really mind either way," I say, knowing it's probably not what she wants to hear.

"Me neither... Although, I guess it could be fun to keep it a surprise until they're born," Lia murmurs, looking thoughtfully up at the prints of our vows hanging on one of the walls, the ones I got her for our first wedding anniversary last July.

I look at them too, thinking about how hard that month was on us emotionally. We'd just found out our first embryo transfer didn't take, so it was a little difficult to go out and celebrate being married a year. Look at us four months later though; she's sixteen weeks pregnant with twins, I've got a new brother-in-law, and we're about to be first-time homeowners.