The "Tiebreaker"- A Gender Reveal

The baby is a...

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Hi! I’m Meredith. Still Today is a collection of stories about my family. I’d love to hear from you—if you received this in an email, you can send me a direct email by hitting “reply.” I’m grateful for the comments, the clicks on the “heart” button, and the encouraging texts. These posts are public and share-able—thanks for reading!

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Our fifth baby (currently in-utero) was first called the “tiebreaker” a long time ago. When we were in hospital with our two-day-old fourth baby, our nurse asked us, “So, are you guys gonna go for a tiebreaker?”

He had five kids of his own, and we told him the split of the rest of our kids—a boy, a girl, another girl, and the newborn boy. Our nurse wasn’t the last to ask. It’s been a popular question at the doctor’s office and the park and the grocery store and the airport: “Will there be a tiebreaker?”

from istockphoto. Couldn’t find 2 to 2.

After I started telling people I was pregnant, that question was replaced by, “So, are you going to have more after this, or are you done?”

The answer to that question is not simple, so I tried to describe our answer with some cute mathematical formulas. When my physicist husband read the draft, he had a cow (“I didn’t have a cow, I just said that wasn’t how math works.”—Jonny).

He kind of had a cow (image from pixabay).

So, here’s version twelve:

The question “Are you done having kids?” supposes a value for “x,” where “x” is the number of children a family wants to have: “We would like to have ‘x.’” If the current number of children matches “x,” then the family is “done.”

We have not assigned a value for “x.” Instead, we operate according to:

“N” is the current number of children in the family (“It’s a piecewise function! It should have domains, but that will work.”— also Jonny). “x” is subject to change—it could either be represented by “N+1,” or it could remain “N.” Will we have another child? Maybe. We’ll have to reassess when N=5. There are many more underlying family formulas, but none of them are static. There are seismic shifts over time.

That premise is not necessary to unpack to a kind stranger standing at the baby swings. But let me tell you something about being pregnant with my fifth kid: people ask a lot of personal questions, but they’ve also started telling me things about their lives. Maybe it’s because my external state (pregnant, four small kids) reveals many of the particulars of my life. They already know a lot about me. So I hear about diagnoses and losses and dreams. I hear about the times when the value of “x” was unpredictable.

No matter how many other children you have, pregnancy is a state of vulnerability. It’s “putting yourself out there” in the most literal way. That level of vulnerability begets vulnerability from others.

We went to an ultrasound appointment three weeks ago. The maternal fetal medicine doctor (who also referred to the baby as “the tiebreaker”) ushered us out the door after giving us the “all clear” on the rest of the anatomy. The sealed envelope with “boy” or “girl” written on a piece of cardstock was tucked into my purse.

On the way to his father’s favorite breakfast place, Jonny asked me, “So… what do you think?”

“I am not guessing. I can’t guess.” I’d made a strict promise to myself two years ago not to guess on gender anymore—zero for three was plenty of guessing for me.

“This is your last chance before we open the envelope.”

“Well… no. No, I can’t do it. The card in the envelope will change to be the opposite of whatever I say. What do you think? Is your guess still the same?”

“It’s a boy,” he said, turning into the parking lot.

Before our over-easy eggs and breakfast potatoes arrived, I handed over the envelope. I really didn’t have a guess, or even a specific hope. But I did want to know.

Jonny opened the envelope and smiled. He handed it across the table to me:

WAIT

FOR

IT…

this is just the word “boy” in Garamond size 150, but the original inspiration was https://www.teepublic.com/baseball-tee/4606729-word-boy, which is a teepublic shirt that is certainly copyrighted. I now want three of these in varying sizes.

Boy, oh boy! A boy!

We’re delighted.

There was a time when I thought we’d have a bunch of boys in a row. I was certain our second would be a boy (she wasn’t) and so certain our third was supposed to be a boy, I almost made the ultrasound technician check twice when she said, “I think it’s a girl.” Aren’t we supposed to have brothers? I wondered. Yes—we are—but not in the way I imagined seven years ago.

In a few years, my oldest will have minions.

I wouldn’t have come up with that.

Thank goodness I don’t get to decide about the order.

On My Mind

During our move, I needed a good historical fiction read (historical fiction and Gushers = not the worst stress response). Enter Robert Graves’s I, Claudius—an imagined autobiography of Tiberius Claudius Drusus Nero Germanicus, “Claudius” for short, a real grandson of Augustus Caesar and a member of the noble Claudian family. I could talk about this book for hours, but I can only recommend it with strong reservations because the Claudians were, for the most part, bad people—Caligula (Claudius’s nephew) and Nero (great-nephew) were both Claudians.

“Clau-clau-clau-claudius” was at least saner than some of his family members. He was an accomplished historian, but his uneven gait and stammer made him the object of constant ridicule. His grandmother Livia (the second wife of Augustus) wouldn’t allow him to dine at her table.

Of all the characters, Livia struck me the most. Claudius’s (ahem, Graves’s) stories about her speak to a dimension of the mother-son relationship. It’s not easy for any parent to trust God with their child, but there is an intensity to the way mothers can grasp for control of their sons.

In first-century Rome, the burgeoning practice was to posthumously deify monarchs. After Augustus died, Livia’s surviving son and grandsons were, so to speak, sons of a god. It was of vital importance to her that the monarchy remained in her line.

At the same time, in a tucked-away corner of the empire, the actual Son of God was living quietly with His parents. From the manger to the cross, His mother chose to trust.

Livia Augusta and Jesus of Nazareth died within a few years of each other, maybe even in the same year. There is not a consensus among historians.

She was 86, He was 33.

Nobody worships Augustus anymore.

The Stackup

YAY FOR BABY BOYS!

The Boys Who Lived

I’m learning a lot from Laura’s raw impressions of her recent cancer diagnosis and treatment. It’s very real. Worth recommending to anyone who is suffering with illness—they will feel seen.

In which I am just plain sad

This was straight up fascinating, as is Phelps-Roper herself—also cool to see another news outlet on Substack. More and more, I’m convinced that this platform is a really quality place to find journalism. Articles and projects like these depend on paid support from committed subscribers, not clicks from the Internet at large, and this is everything… also, 1.6K likes on a Substack article is, like, stratospheric.

The Witch Trials of J.K. Rowling