Why I hate the 'I'm Going to Bed' Meme

Lately, I’ve been seeing this bedtime meme on Facebook and I hate that it reinforces gender stereotypes; the husband simply goes to bed, while the wife cleans and tidies the house and prepares for the next morning before her head ever hits the pillow. Each and every time I look at the list, I have only one thought.

I am the husband.

I am exhausted at 9:30pm and sheepishly crawl off to the warm embrace of my bamboo sheets and cozy pillow most nights of the week.

Do I pick up all the toys first? Nope.

Do I clean and tidy my house first? Nope?

Do I fold a load of laundry first? Nope.

Do I do the dishes and load the dishwasher first? Nope.

I give my husband a kiss, trudge upstairs to wash my face, brush my teeth and put my pajama’s on before I collapse into the bed and fall fast asleep for another night.

Does my husband do ALL THE THINGS I don't before he goes to bed? Yep.

All that being said...

Do I get up with my almost 4 year old at 5am nearly every day? Yep.
Do I work 10 hours a day so that my husband can be home with my boys? Yep.

Do I need to go to bed early to maintain my lifestyle? Yep.

I recognize that in the ideal world this meme wouldn’t even exist, because everything would be perfectly balanced, all the time. And I also understand that this meme is simply a reflection of people’s experience that many people relate to it, but personally, it rubs me the wrong way. 

This meme reinforces my inability to fit into gender stereotypes and worse makes me care, just a little bit, that I don’t fit into traditional household roles.

And in the end, does any of it matter?
Which chores are yours and which chores are your partner's?
Which gender you do (or don’t) identify with in any and all respects?

No, it doesn’t.

What matters is that, however you do things, it works for you and your family.

I may not be a traditional mother in many senses of the word and yet in many others I am and quite frankly, my boys love me just the way I am.

So I am just going to go ahead and continue to hate this meme.

We're on Team Green

 After 21 weeks of waiting, we finally saw our newest little baby today, and he (or she) was perfect.  The baby was healthy, perfectly sized for the age and had the cutest little feet (I'd show you a picture, but my scanner wasn't cooperating this evening).  As you can see, it appears this time around we have a thumb-sucker; we could even see the little jaw moving during the ultrasound.

When people find out I'm pregnant, the first questions are almost always 'when are you due?' and 'do you know what you're having?'.  The answer to the first question is easy, May 9, 2011.  But when it comes to the second question, the answer isn't so clearcut.

Before I was ever pregnant I was certain I wouldn't want to know the gender, that I'd want to do things the 'old fashioned way', but when the time came with the boy, the mere fact that the technology was available and I COULD find out, made me want to.  In the end we decided to have the gender included in the report so that we could ask the midwife if we decided that we just had to know.  We were able to convince ourselves since we were over half way through the pregnancy there was less time left to wait than we already had, and we never found out.  When the boy arrived, the surprise was amazing.

Although the hubs likened finding out the baby's gender to peeking at Christmas presents, not finding out our babies' gender is about more than the suprise for us.  I have heard so many stories of ultrasound gender diagnosis being wrong and although its generally shy little boys being identified as girls, I recently had a friend deliver a little girl after being told her baby was a boy.

And its not just about the colour of the nursery or having to dress a little boy in ruffly sleepers, its the emotional aspect that freaks me out.  As new mom's we're a little crazy; our bodies have been through a fairly traumatic experience, we've barely had any sleep for days and the baby radar is on high alert.  The last thing that I want to add to the mix is emotional drama; the need to mourn (in some sense) for the child that was expected, regardless how much love there is for the child that arrived.

It's the extra emotions that scare me the most, so when they asked us if we wanted to find out the gender at our ultrasound today, I was quick to respond, no.  We're on team green in this house.

Did you or would you find out the gender of your baby?  Why or why not?  It's such an interesting topic and the tech today told me in her experience its about 50/50, so I'd love to hear everyone's opinion and/or experience.