Dude looks like a lady (or: Gender swapping baby dreams)

We all know that Hamburglar McCloud Grimace Mcwhateverstein is a boy.   That was confirmed by my own eyes and by the attitude of the ultrasound tech at my midwife’s office.  Dude is a dude.  (Or, almost.  I mean, I think early this week I said he was a pineapple.  So maybe he’s a pineapple dude?  I don’t know).  However, I had a dream earlier this week.  And it was weird.  My dreams are typically weird, but they tend to be awesome weird.  Like the dream where I was Xena and the day kept repeating itself and I had to fight all these ninjas.  It was awesome.  Or the dream I had junior year in college when I was working on a team project doing a comprehensive analysis of Soap Lake in Central Washington State.  The theme of the dream was “Where is the key to Soap Lake?” because our geochemistry professor had stolen all of the data and was keeping it locked up because he was a spy.  There was a lot of adventure and action and explosions, culminating with one of my team members commandeering a helicopter to rescue us, just when we had acquired the key and it looked like we were going to die.  In real life, that old lab member of mine actually got his pilot’s license and flew helicopters for a bit… and grew a rather impressive beard akin to the beards worn by the fellas in ZZ Top.  But, back to the baby dream…

So, I was sleeping the night before last and McCloud was born a boy.  I think.  But at some point in those first few weeks, he became a girl.  But it’s not like his penis fell off or anything traumatic like that, it was like he was always a girl.  That led dream me to question Mr. Adventure about the gender of our baby at birth and it was all very confusing.  There were other parts of the dream, too, like something to do with flood irrigating our farm or something… I don’t know.  All I know for sure is McCloud became a girl and we changed his name to Edison, as in Thomas Edison, which seems kind of douchy to me since Tesla’s birthday was just the other day and, if McCloud was a girl, I was going to push that we name her Tesla.  So maybe it was some sort of representation of Edison stealing so much from Tesla, even the name of my gender changing baby?  I don’t know. 

In other news, there is a hospital in Zimbabwe that charges women $5 for every scream they let out during childbirth. So that’s pretty awesome.  The article breaks down the economics of the country, saying that the GDP of Zimbabwe is $500 per year, the average income per person is $150, birth in a hospital costs $50…  So, on top of spending a third of your annual income to give birth in hospital, you’re charged a screaming fee which could add up pretty quickly.  I wonder what counts as a scream?  Is there a certain decibel a lady has to reach before she is fined?  Or is it just making any noise that is louder than a normal talking voice?  “Please use your library labor screams, ladies, or I’m going to have to fine you…”  I’m picturing a librarian that looks like Janine Melnitz from Ghostbusters saying this.

I’m super lucky to have insurance that is paid for by The Man.  But, maybe if I didn’t, Mr. Adventure would have been more on board with my desire to birth at home.  But then if there were major complications and I had to go to the hospital… I would probably end up having to pay at least a third of my annual income.  Hospital shit is expensive, y’all.

That is all.