The Grossest Thing I Have Learned So Far

Dear Cletus,

Things have been going well with you. You're kicking away, and I'm wearing maternity clothes pretty much full time. Now that we are solidly in the middle of the fifth month of your gestation, I finally look and feel pregnant.

But none of that compares to the gross-out I got this morning from the Babycenter website, with its weekly email about your development. It started out innocuously enough, talking about how you finally have eyebrows (which is good - because eyebrows make a difference). But then came the grossest thing I have learned so far: According to Babycenter.com, this week's major update is as follows: "If you're having a girl, her vagina has begun to form as well."

That is the grossest thing I have ever heard.

The thing is, you never hear about your daughter's vagina in a good way. There is no scenario where you would be happy to hear, "By the way, Maizie has a wonderful vagina!" - even if it was a gynecologist saying that to me, I'd be weirded out. It's also not dinner-table conversation ("Had a good lacrosse practice, got an A on my chemistry test, and everything's good in the vagina department too, Mom.")

Don't get me wrong, Cletus. I'm glad your female parts are all developing - life is going to be challenging enough for you without having a Middlesex-esque experience. But I don't necessarily want to know what goes on down there with you, any more than I absolutely have to. Even when the doctor did the ultrasound to find out your gender, I complained that the "money shot" was a little too graphic. 

I don't know where my distaste on this subject comes from. Despite the hard work of the feminist movement, I am still grossed out by the subject. I tried to educate myself, and even to embrace the wonderful-ness of being a woman that having a vagina is apparently supposed to now symbolize. In college, I saw The Vagina Monologues not once, but twice - and it didn't help (I left the theater both times wondering how on earth someone found 2 hours worth of stage material surrounding a woman's genitalia, but the closest male equivalent is a silly 30-second strip-tease in The Full Monty where you don't even get to see the goods). 

So anyways, I've come to the realization that among the many, many shortcomings I will have as a parent, being unable to teach you to talk freely and openly about your body ranks pretty high. Rest assured that you and I will go through potty training at some point, but after that you won't hear me bringing up your nether regions until you're around 11, at which point a very awkward conversation will ensue. It will probably involve me vaguely gesticulating and mentioning cramps "down there", before finally shoving a box of maxipads and this book at you. Just assume now that you'll have to rely on the conversations with your girlfriends in bathrooms at school in order to get your information. I'm truly sorry.

So anyways... congrats on having a vagina, Cletus. Let's never talk about this again.