I didn't realize until today that I'm a very risk averse person. I like to research things, study the pros and cons, then make a move. I take chances when it comes to my professional career. But outside of that, I'm the careful guy. Read Consumer Reports before buying a car, that type, you know what I'm talking about. Read the prospectus before buying a mutual fund. YEAH, I even read the legalese (make that, used to read) on a website before clicking, "I agree." Well, this behavior has led me to put off marriage til my late 30s. Ditto with homebuying. I looked when I was single, but I passed on condo after condo until I got married. Ditto with baby making. Condoms were a constant companion until I finally decided after seven years of marriage to go for it. I may be skinny, but I've always believed I'd be studly enough to deliver.
I did.
Three weeks ago, my wife discovered she was pregnant. I had harbored some thoughts that she just might be, given that she felt bloated and constipated and had missed a period or two. But then again, she is 43 ... We had decided against doing anything artificial. We'd just do it the way nature intended, and if God had a baby in his/her plans, so be it.
We decided not to tell anyone just yet. My wife says she'll abort the baby if it's found to have Downs Syndrome or some other defect or disease. She's Japanese. I'm American. And I was raised Roman Catholic. I consider myself a liberal on social issues; moderate to conservative on financial issues. I go to church weekly, but only after my wife pushed me, even though she's not Christian. She's Shinto. I personally feel a tad uncomfortable when it comes to the issue of choice and abortion. But I believe the woman has the choice since she's the one who has to bear the burden.
Then came Friday, June 30.
I didn't accompany my wife when she went to have a CVS. That's the procedure by which the physician can determine whether the baby will be a healthy one or not. The doc also provided a sonogram, you know, those xrayed pix inside the tummy that shows the tiny squiggly thing nestled in the mommy's womb. When she offered to show me the images, I shirked and said no.
That set her off.
She accused me of being in denial. No such thing, I said. I just told her that I didn't want to see the sonograms until she was in the clear, ie, that the doc would rule the baby a healthy one and she would thereby forgo an abortion. She insisted that I speak to someone close to me to get his/her opinion. So I called my younger brother who has a one-year-old.
He said he thought I was partially in denial. But he also admitted having a similar conversation with his non-Catholic wife. She said she would also abort the baby if the CVS (Chorionic Villus Sampling) showed it was unhealthy. He had accompanied his wife to every major doctor's visit. When he saw the images at 20 months, he felt that they had gone to the point-of-no-return. Luckily for them, the baby was found to be healthy. But if the baby had been diagnosed otherwise, he said he would have felt guilt at letting his wife abort the baby. If she did, he would then refrain from trying again to have a child.
The next morning, ie yesterday (Saturday), I told my wife what he said. After I admitted that I was partially in denial (she says I'm in full denial), things mollified, and we were back on good terms. Later today, she heard from the doc that we had a 99 percent probability that the baby would be healthy. WHEW! But we decided it's still too early to tell our parents.
Then she asked (a second time) if I wanted to know the gender of the baby. I said no. When I said no yesterday, she said that, too, was a sign of fear of commitment. Absolutely false, I said. I'm the Type-A type who doesn't open gifts until Xmas or until the very birthday. I can certainly wait for a major surprise like the gender. But since she seemed to want to tell me (and she was smiling), I relented.
We're about to have a boy.
From the day she told me she was pregnant, I told her I was certain it'd be a boy. She thought it'd be a girl. I psychic friend of hers later told her I was right. The reason: all of my relatives on my father's side have girls: my three female cousins produced a string of X chromosome carriers; so did my younger brother and sis. My maternal cousin produced a boy, but he'll take on a different surname from ours. Given the odds and the lineup of girls, I just knew ... or as Father Guillermo Sarducci used to say on Saturday Night Live, "I justa know it!"
Amen.
Now, we're even thinking up names for our newbie to come.
That means my wife won't have to opt for an abortion. Whew! I felt relieved. But my wife didn't sound all that excited. Perhaps it's because she had to wait three weeks for word to come back from the labs. It didn't help that she's in Japan right now visiting her mom. The doctor never called to leave a message at our home in New York. It turns out he had left a message in her cell phone, but she doesn't have access to it because she's abroad. Or perhaps she's not excited because she is just too anxious at the thought of becoming a mother at age 43. Well, at any rate, the baby will be fine, so I can't wait to tell my family. It's late, around 11:30 pm now, so I'll just call them tomorrow. 
