Wednesday, September 7, 2016

On the appropriate color coding of infants

On Sunday, my child wore this:



















It's a bit blurry because my husband is bouncing her. She has to be in a constant state of motion or have something to look at while awake.

It's basically a white onesie with ruffled sleeves with pink on the edges, light pink pants, and pink-striped socks.

And she got mistaken for a boy twice.

David says people always assume babies are boys.

Hence all the pink.

Look, there are two reasons I dress my child in pink even though I do not like the color and I don't particularly like that girls are always assigned pink.
1) I want to communicate her gender accurately more than I dislike that social shortcut.
2) Most of her clothes were given to me and are, as a result, pink. Heck, even some of the stuff I bought was pink. But with cute little foxes on them.

Anyway, I don't want people to think she is a boy, largely because I highly value clear communication. And then I feel obligated to correct them whenever they assume she is a boy, or at least head off the question. Kids her age don't have a whole lot to their identities other than their first and middle name, family position, gender, and amount of hours they sleep at night. Cause that's what everybody asks.

Sidetrack for a moment. Why does everyone ask if she is sleeping through the night? I've heard people ask the mother of a two-week-old if he was sleeping through the night. At two weeks, they generally advise you to wake the baby up like every four hours to feed if they aren't waking up on their own, so it'd be a bad sign if they were sleeping through that! I never asked anybody that until after I had a kid, and the reason I ask is for polling data. How does my child measure up to the norm? Are other people in my boat? He still wakes up three-plus times? I feel your pain.

In case you're wondering, no, she isn't sleeping through the night. Generally though she wakes up an average of two times and goes back to sleep after nursing pretty easy and doesn't wake up for the morning until usually after seven. Could it be better? Much. Would I prefer it better? Definitely. Livable? Yes, way better than 0-2. So given the options, I'll take this.

Where was I? Ah yes. The proper color coding of infants.

I like dressing her in stuff that is either girly-styled or girly-colored, although preferably not too much of both at the same time.

I tend to like things that use bold colors, like orange and turquoise, patterns like arrows, or girly up an outfit, like a lacy onesie under blue denim overalls. Feminine touches to gender-neutral things.

Sunday's outfit was a vague reflection of mine as I didn't feel like wearing a skirt and so wore khaki capris. And clearly, I failed in my attempts to communicate (through the liberal application of pink) her gender.

Why do I care if people think she's a boy? Why do I need her to look like a girl? Gender is fluid?

No. I'm not even getting into that. We're talking about when the world was normal.

At any rate, I prefer it when other people dress their kids in something that at least hints as to their sex so I can use the proper pronouns when talking about him or her. Asking "is it a boy or a girl?" can be construed as insulting (especially if the child in question is older).

And so I am failing. I guess the pink pants were too light-colored. I need to up my game. More frills? Skirts? Headbands? Earrings? A label on her forehead?

On headbands... I've never really gotten into those for babies. I mean she doesn't have hair... so what's the point? I have seen some babies with impressive full heads of hair and headbands look cute on them, but on my baby's bald noggin?

Ah well, if it's for communication... anybody know some cute, yet comfortable headbands that are about as obvious as a label maker?












Behold the baby glory.

No, she's a girl.

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