The Fastest Anyone Has Ever Been Embarrassed of their Dad

The days of embarrassing myself in front of my daughter started earlier than I expected. At least she'll have these blog posts to look back on and relive said embarrassment some day.

My daughter wasn’t even a minute old before I did something embarrassing in front of her.

I have to believe that the root of this embarrassment came from the fact that Becky and I were convinced we were having a boy. Back when we skipped the gender identification part of the 20-week ultrasound, we had a gut feeling that our baby would be a boy. As the gestational days wore on, that gut feeling became an inkling, the inkling became a belief and that belief became a truth. Plus, the foolproof Gender Pencil Test told us we were having a boy. How could something that the internet calls the foolproof Gender Pencil Test be wrong?

So, there I was, staring through a glass partition into the operating room where Becky had just delivered via C-section, certain that I was about to meet my baby boy. As one of the nurses brought the still-slimy baby to the window and held it up, the nurse standing next to me said, “Can you tell if it’s a boy or a girl?”

I looked at what was supposed to be my baby boy, and suddenly, I wasn’t sure. Before this baby of mine was held up in front of me, I would have bet my life savings that I’d score a sixteen hundred on the Naked Baby Identification Test (NBIT), but honestly, I had no idea if I was looking at a boy or a girl.

This might seem ridiculous, but let me defend myself. As a result of the crazy hormones that go along with pregnancy/birth, my baby’s lady parts were a bit swollen. Take this fact that it looked like  that there was something down there and combine it with my preconceived notion that I was having a son and I had an answer.

“I think it’s a boy.”

“No, it’s a girl,” the nurse said, as her and the other nurses did their best to stifle laughter. I was mortified. You know you’ve done something stupid when medical professionals can’t help but laugh at you. How could I not have been able to tell that my baby was a girl?

As I picked up Rosalie for the first time, it wasn’t her female-ness that surprised me. It was the fact that while I knew it was inevitable that I’d embarrass myself in front of my child at some point, I hadn’t expected that I would do it before she was even a minute old.

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